Heat Rises

Chapters

Rainbow Florence Dash
Rainbow 'Gusto' Dash
Princess Twilight Snootywings
Expectations
Rainbow Gusto Dash

Rainbow Florence Dash

Rainbow stared into the VIP section of the pub with a gleam in her wide eyes. The room had a low ceiling, only ten foot tall or so, and the tables placed around the edge of the exclusive area were made of plastic fashioned to look like glass. Curtains adorned the walls, sectioning off private VIP booths, and a thick fog of smoke permeated the stuffy air. Even the barstools lined up on the counter where she sat were clouds that had been factory pressed to be flashy, but, much to Rainbow’s ire, their sharp contours were already digging into her flank. In the center of the room sat a stage, a solo DJ atop it filling the air with an upbeat melody, the few ponies in the audience paying him no attention, grinding into each other as they danced.

The bartender smiled from ear to ear, her eyes never leaving Soarin as she chirped her practiced portmanteau. “So, what’ll you have to drink?”

He flashed a smile in return and leaned forward, resting his body on the bartop. “Tsk tsk… Hazie Daze…” He pouted for the briefest of moments. “ I go to the trouble of coming to my favorite bartender for drinks and she doesn’t even remember the regular?”

“O-Oh! Sorry, Soarin, you just know how I get when you visit,” Hazie admitted with a faint blush. “Which should be more often for your favorite bartender, you know. Alright, then—a Wonderwing for the Wonderbolt. And what’ll you be having, miss Soarin’s friend?”

Rainbow’s head was turned around, paying more attention to the scenery than to the bartop.

The bartender’s smile faltered a touch. “Impressed by the VIP section, hun? You’re lucky—only the best of the best get through that velvet rope.”

“Eh. I’m not a huge fan myself.” Rainbow shot a glance and a grin to Soarin. “Not enough rainbow motif if you’d ask me.”

Soarin chuckled. “Oh, I get it. She’s just not used to the Wonderbolt treatment. Yet.”

Rainbow blinked, then shook her head vigorously, flushing red as she realized her words weight. “N-No, I mean, it’s nice… I just don’t… Yeah, I’m just not used to it.”

Soarin opened his mouth to respond but Haize beat him to the punch. “So you want anything to drink, hun?”

Soarin gave her an eager smile.

“Oh. Me? Uh… W-well, what kind of cider do you have?”

Soarin cocked an eyebrow. “Cider? Babe, we’re in Cloudsdale’s finest pub. Drink the good stuff while you can!”

Rainbow blinked, again, and flushed red. Did he just call me… She shook her head and let out a weak chuckle. “R-Right, I knew that. So… uh… what’s your wine selection?”

“Oh man… Rainbow, don’t tell me you’ve never had real drinks,” Soarin chided with a teasing smirk.

“What! Of course I have!” Rainbow’s blush deepened. A petulant clock ticked in her head; for once she wished she had any sort of records in speed-impressing. “I have cider third thursday of every month with the girls! Rarity even made me try a glass of wine…” she gulped, “once.”

Soarin let out a weak chuckle, moving his head a little closer and his eyebrow a little higher. “Thursdays?”

A drip of sweat rolled down the back of Dash’s neck, only just realizing how stuffy the small room was. “Well, yeah. I mean, I train on weekends too, so it’s gotta be thursday night... Friday is at least a late work day.”

Hazie Daze put a hoof to her mouth and choked back a snicker. Soarin leaned forward and put his head between his hooves. “Oh, Rainbow, Rainbow, Rainbow…” He rocked his head back and forth, before ruffling her hair with one of his hooves. “You adorable little thing.”

“H-Hey! I’m not…” Rainbow pouted and kicked a hoof lightly against the counter.

Soarin only smirked, his eyes darting between the pout, the kick, and her eyes.

“Fine,” she said, looking back to Hazie. “I’ll just have what he’s having.”

“Sure thing, sugar. I’ll be back in a jiff!” Hazie ducked beneath the counter and started rustling around in the bottles underneath.

Rainbow crinkled her snout and turned back to Soarin. “Hey, what’s the deal with making fun of my training regimen! Aren’t you supposed to be the Wonderbolt?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Soarin said, raising his hooves in defense, “I think it’s great that you’ve got something that works for you. You just seem like… y'know. Like a mare who’s experimented a little. Didn’t you drop out of flight school?” The brow of his nose twitched slightly as he said it, but his gaze never faltered.

“Psh—yeah! Because they were holding me back! After three years that obstacle course was way easier than cloudkickin for ‘eight’—” She made air quotes with her hooves and rolled her eyes. “—hours a day and I wasn’t getting paid to be there when all I cared about was flying and Equestrian History.”

“Equestrian History?”

She shrugged. “It was my back-up plan. Don’t even try to tell me Teddy Hoovsavelt wasn’t a badass.”

“Who?”

Hazie’s head popped up over the counter, placing before them two tall glasses with stars embezzled into the sides and wings spread out wide from each side of the brim. “Tah-dah! Two Wonderwings. I gotta say… Rainbow, was it? You’ve got some gusto for trying this.”

Rainbow smirked, but shifted slightly in her seat. “Hell yeah! Gusto is my middle name. Well, actually it’s Florence, but it’s not like that sounds any more Equestrian.”

“Thanks, babe,” Soarin said with a wink, wrapping his hooves around the oblong glass as if it were a foal he were about to kiss on the forehead. “We’ll call you if we need ya’.”

Hazie looked at Rainbow and gave her a half-smile, then turned and left without another word.

Bringing the drink to her lips, Rainbow closed her eyes and let the sickeningly-sweet smelling liquid pour down her throat. The Wonderwing was anything but sickeningly sweet—it tasted like rusted iron, quickly wrapping its noxious flavor around her tongue. After a battle that must have lasted nearly ten seconds, she gulped the liquid down her throat and sucked in air, coughing as tears formed on the corners of her eyes.

“Too rough on ya, huh?” Soarin said, rolling a hoof around the base of his still-full glass. “Yeah, ponies who aren’t fond of raspberry don’t really like the flavor.”

There was raspberry in that? There was flavor in that? She looked over to Soarin, who watched her with a curious smile as he leaned onto one of his hooves. Despite the noxious taste, she couldn’t bring herself to do anything but grin. “...Yeah… I’m more of a blueberry fan myself.” I’d be a soggy wet spinach fan compared to that.

He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Drinks are on the house in here—we’ll just get you something else.” He leaned up over the counter, his eyes sweeping back and forth.

“Wait,” Rainbow said, placing a hoof on his shoulder. “Could we maybe do something else?”

He blinked as he looked back at her. “Something else? Nonsense, I can tell you’re nervous. Trust me, you’ll feel feel better with some drinks in you.”

A knot inside Rainbow tightened. Her mind flashed back to a night out singing karaoke where she had drank just a little too much and belted classics until the owners kicked her out for hogging the mic. To think that Soarin might see her like that was…

Rainbow sighed, and turned her eyes away. “Look, I uh… I didn’t want to say this, but… I’m allergic to alcohol.”

“...Allergic?” Soarin looked at her like she had uttered ‘I love wearing dresses’.

“Yeah, you know. Like, it doesn’t do anything for me. Just… the more I drink the bigger a headache I get.”

Soarin sighed. “Well, if that’s how it is then that’s how it is.” He tapped a hoof against his chin. “ I guess darts might be fun for a mare with such delicate wings.”

“D-Delicate?” Rainbow said, flushing red again. She wrapped her wings around her, so they were positioned in front of her face. Her primaries were straight, orderly, and fanned from her coverts as a dense forest of feathers. The bones the feathers were attached to, her scapulars, were covered in muscle, full and toned meticulously by years of training.

“Haha, damn! Dexterous, dextrous was the word I was looking for...” He shot her a sly wink. “Come on, let’s go.”

As Rainbow jumped down from her stool she felt something coarse and firm slap her on the cutie mark. Her ears shot up and her limbs instinctually went stiff, an angry fire building within her as she turned her head like clockwork to look for the offender.

Soarin blinked innocently, but a flick of the tail and a slowly-growing grin gave him away. He tapped one of her outstretched wings with a hoof. “Better put those away, babe—ponies have a way about being presumptuous, don’t you think?”

She took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes, about to let loose a rain of slurs that would pummel his ego straight into next week.

Wait! She huffed. This is a Wonderbolt! He’s probably just used to Cloudsdale mares! She puffed. C’mon, Rainbow! This is the Stallion who first broke mach three! This is the Stallion who made it to the Wonderbolts two years out of Flight School with only a single dad! What have you really got to complain about? A shitty drink? She tossed the bangs out of her eyes, but forced a calm, concerned expression on her features as she did. Good! No yelling!

She exhaled all the air she had inhaled in a slow, tension-relieving breath. “H-Hey,” she said, a pained smile on her face. “What was that for, huh?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said, turning his body away from hers and taking a step towards the dart board. “Just a little joke, Dashie.”

“Good one,” she said, perhaps a bit more flatly than she intended. She followed his step and walked across the room, a brass riff ringing in her ears as they passed the stage.

“Don’t be afraid to get me back for it—I’ll be prepared.”

“Prepared, huh? Are you prepared for me to kick your flank at darts?” Rainbow said, walking to the dartboard and pulling the darts out with her wingtips.

“Is that a challenge, filly?”

Rainbow shot a quick glare to Soarin, who had made his way over to her side. “Filly? I should be calling you a filly for losing so bad on that race up here!”

Soarin smirked back and rolled his eyes. “Well what if I said I let you win, rookie?”

She thrust a dart into the space between their eyes. “Well I’d say don’t let it happen again.”

In one swift motion he took the dart with his forehoof, and, without turning his eyes to the dartboard, tossed it. Both of them turned slowly, each refusing to break the gaze first, before snapping their gaze to the dartboard.

The dart was lodged three feet above the board, half-submerged in a cloud.

Rainbow cackled, slamming her hoof against the floor, but Soarin just shrugged it off. “I only need two to beat you, babe.”

“Oh yeah? Beat this!” Dash crouched over and drew a bead on the bulls-eye. After a moment she snapped up and sent the dart whizzing through the air, sailing and impaling it into a slice that read ‘18’ beneath it.

Soarin smiled. “Never mind. I’ll only need one.” He tossed the tossed the dart with a flick of his hoof and sent it sailing straight into the bulls-eye. “See? Fifty.” Without another pause, he tossed his last dart and sent it careening into his first, knocking both of them off the wall. “Come on, Dashie, you can beat one dart with your three, right?”

“Hah! It was… It was just dumb luck! Watch and learn...” Rainbow crouched over and sent another dart flying, embedding it in the slice marked ‘10’. “...Ten.” She shot a dark glare to the wonderbolt, who was busy staring at his own hooves, a satisfied grin on his face. “Well, whatever! I only need twenty-three to beat you, now. I’ll just land my dart in a double wedge, no problem.” She crouched over and prepared to throw her last dart, but Soarin held up a hoof.

“Wait, wait, I can’t let you do this. Who taught you how to throw darts, that cowpony friend of yours? You’re throwing like an Earth Pony.”

“Oh yeah? And how do you throw like a Pegasus?”

Soarin leaned forward, a gleeful smile suddenly adorning his face. “I’ll show you,” he said, stepping forward and placing a hoof on the bridge of Rainbow’s back. “Come on, crouch over like you’ve been doing.”

Rainbow glared at him, but crouched down, holding the dart upright with her right forehoof and making sure her tail was pressed firmly against her other end.

“When you throw from that position you’re trying to give your dart enough power that it flies straight no matter how much distance is between it,” he said, voice low as he slid his hoof down the length of her body, resting it above her tail. A desire to flick her tail away itched at her brain, but she suppressed it.

“What you want to do…” he said, pushing his body against the side of her own, “is lean back, and put your weight on your haunches.” His breath poured over her ears from above, and she fought a shiver as his hoof ran up the length of her body again. “Come on, now.”

Without thinking, she obliged, and in doing so pushed her neck back into where his face was. His muzzle rested on the bridge of her neck, and she could swear he was rubbing it ever-so-gently up and down in her fur. A shudder betrayed her.

“Aw, unsteady hooves isn’t good for a game of darts, Dashie,” he murmured, bringing his hoof up and under her own that held the dart. “Let me help. Keep your focus on the bulls-eye, now...”

His hoof lingered under hers for a moment, but it felt like an eternity—Rainbow froze in place, unable to bring her body away from his own. With an unmistakable brush of his tail against her flank, he guided her hoof with his own and sent the dart sailing.

It landed perfectly centered inside the double-wedge marked ‘12’. Rainbow could feel Soarin’s smile through her fur. “Well what do you know—you pulled by on the fringe of your blueberry-scented coat.”

Rainbow jumped away, jostling Soarin as she took three long steps in the other direction. She looked away from him, eyes hidden behind her bangs as she breathed heavily.

“Rainbow, you okay? You look like you’re gonna be sick…”

This is not how it’s supposed to go. Numerous diary pages, blue and yellow posters, and fitful nights with her hoof between her legs flashed through her mind. We… we should be on a cloud, looking at the stars, or racing each other until we collapse in a pile, or… or… She took a deep breath, inhaling only air musky with fumes from open liquor.

Bile rose from her throat. She slammed a hoof to her mouth, fighting back the urge to vomit.

“Fuck! Uh… Hazie!” Soarin called from behind her. A brown body was next to hers in a matter of moments. She felt hooves around the barrel of her chest, leading her slowly across the stylish black clouds through a squeaky door. Through blurred vision she could make out tile floors and, eventually, a porcelain bowl.

Hazie’s voice beside her was low, soothing. “Ssh… c’mon, girl, just let it out. It’s okay; you’ll feel better when you do.”

Rainbow nodded through tear-stained eyes, threw her hoof from her mouth, and emptied the precious few contents of her stomach.

“I don’t blame you,” Hazie said, patting Rainbow on the back.

“I—” A cough cut off Rainbow’s wet and ragged words. “I didn’t… drink any…”

Hazie sighed. “I know.”

Rainbow heaved as the words reached her ears, dipping down for round two against her stomach. There was nothing left but drips of saliva and dry heaves, but she felt like she’d be there all night. Her body burned in ways that felt detestable, foreign.

She lay there, her head on the rim of the bowl, until a blank numbness crept over her.

“Good girl. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up so you can make the trip home.” Rainbow stood, her legs shaking under her, but Hazie’s brown hoof found it’s way under her barrel, supporting her weight. “Lean against me.” She did. They made their way over to a sink, each step putting more confidence into Rainbow’s hooves.

A faucet turned on, and Rainbow splashed her face, sighing as the water dripped down her fur. “I… I’m not going home. I can’t yet.”

“I’m not gonna tell you what you can and can’t do,” Hazie said, leaning against the tile wall beside her. “But you should go, for your own good.”

“I’m fine. Besides, when am I gonna get another chance to hang out with Soarin?”

“Just about every day, if what they say about you is true.”

Rainbow groaned. “But this is the first day.”

“That only means what you make it mean, hun.” Hazie’s hooves clopped against the tile below. “Do what you gotta do, but make sure that this is the last bathroom you stumble out of feeling sick.” The bathroom door creaked open and closed, but the clouds made no noise as it slammed shut.

“Hey.” Rainbow fidgeted, her eyes glancing to Soarin’s as she stood before the glass-imitation table.

Soarin sat, twiddling his wings and humming a tune as Rainbow pulled out a chair. He sprung up, lazy features snapping to a suave smile as she sat next to him.

“Hey there! Damn, that’s a rough break,” he said, dropping a hoof on her own. “I guess you weren’t joking when you said you were allergic.” He gave her a worried smile. “Want me to take you back to your hotel?”

Rainbow grinned, shaking her head. “Nah, it left as quick as it came.”

He whistled, leaning back in his seat shaking his head. “Rainbow Gusto Dash. Gotta say, if it was me in there I’d be begging for somepony to take me home.”

Rainbow shifted in her seat, trying to think of something to say. Soarin didn’t let the silence linger. He leaned forward, smiling as he looked her in the eyes.

“Listen, Rainbow… I didn’t want to bring it up, but…” He paused and cocked his head. “I figured it would just embarrass you, but I guess that was dumb of me considering what you just went through.” He sighed, and took her hooves in his own. “Look—it’s pretty obvious that you need it bad. We’ve just been dancing around it all night, but I’m not the kind of stallion you need to try and impress, Rainbow.”

Rainbow tried to look away. She wished her eyes had widened, or that she had blushed, or laughed, or grinned, or anything.

“I like you, Rainbow. I think you’re sexy.” That did it—she felt her tail flick, and took in a breath of air. He continued. “My place is just a couple blocks from here. Why don’t we go back and get started on that problem of yours?”

Rainbow 'Gusto' Dash

Cold water ran down Rainbow’s face. She hardly believed she was the mare staring back at her—baggy eyes, pinpricks as pupils, a revolting stench permeating her being. The solo light of Soarin’s bathroom was bright white, new, and fit with the grandiose yellow-and-blue rugs on the tile, toilet-seat covers, and fifty bottles of cologne that littered the sink she was hunched over in. But it gazed upon her as an outcast, a blemish on the fantastic furniture, too blind to see that it was the crown of a sterile shithole.

She’d do it, if she had another chance.

She’d buck him in the face, to boot. She’d fly home at speeds that would make him cry, and tell the girls, ‘Nah, he’s a dickhead.’

“Babe?” A voice slunk in from between the crack of the bathroom door. “You feeling sick again?”

“No.” The words might as well have been more vomit.

“Why don’t you come back to bed? I know you need more than one round to kick it.”

The bathroom door creaked open and closed, but the clouds made no noise as it slammed shut.

Author's Note

I gave it a dark tag.
If you are thinking that I purposefully set up expectations only to subvert them in a hamfisted way for cheap shock value, don't hesitate to comment and tell me what you didn't like-- plenty of other people already have.

This arc is not supposed to be satisfying. You're not supposed to enjoy it, and if you're left wondering what just happened then realize that that's, to a degree, what I intended the words to convey. Use the way you feel to color how you view the words on the page, and the words going forward. The fact that I feel the need to put this in an authors note is more than indicative that I've failed in what I tried to do, so sorry about that.

Hopefully this doesn't turn you off to everything I do. Dark/Tragedy is not my forte-- I like fluffy, happy romancey stuff, but when I was writing this I saw some potential to do something I don't usually do and I ran with it. You're allowed to hate me for that if you want.

Princess Twilight Snootywings

“Wait, so you can figure out flight acceleration vectors in your head just from the data you pull in from your wingtips?” Twilight chanced a look back at her own wings, which flapped slowly as they approached Cloudsdale Colosseum.

“Yeah, yeah, but that’s baby stuff,” Fleetfoot said, flying his fiftieth circle around her. “The core of flight calculus is the same as regular—the functions—and if you’re smart enough to memorize Bright Wings’ constant you can use that with the airspeed you get from your wingtips and put together all kinds of interesting stuff to figure out on the fly!” Fleetfoot snorted and brought a hoof to his mouth. “Literally! On the fly!”

Twilight giggled much more loudly than was apt for a joke of that caliber, but couldn’t bring herself to stop. “Oh… oh Celestia, that shouldn’t be that funny.”

“Well! Finally!” Fleetfoot begun flying backwards so they were face to face, his bright eyes and wide grin visible easily even through the unlit night. “Somepony gets it.”

“Please,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been waiting for someone to get my dumb jokes for years now.”

“Welp! I’m your stallion!” Fleetfoot put on a goofy smile, though Twilight suspected it was supposed to be sincere.

And what a stallion he was. Since they had left the bar he hadn’t had to ask for a single clarification or definition, and he still exhibited no symptoms of fatigue! Better than all that, she had even learned something from him. To top it all off, he definitely had the body of a Wonderbolt.

No! Bad Twilight! She pouted. Why bad? You should be embarrassed with yourself! He has a great mind, who cares how perfectly taut his flanks are!

“So, did you notice anything wrong with our performance today?” Fleetfoot thankfully broke her train of thought.

“Hrm? Wrong? Not really, it seemed like everything went off without a hitch!”

“Ha! Far from it, though. That’s the reason we’re going back to the coliseum,” he explained. “We had the skyward wind actuator go down right at the beginning of the day and it bogged us down pretty good. Our turns, especially upward, were off by almost 10 degrees.”

Wind… actuator… context clues. “So you weren’t getting wind in from outside the city’s windshields, then?”

“Yup! Real basic stuff.”

Twilight blushed faintly and gave a hint of a smile. Knowing her, it was just as goofy looking as his was.

He continued, tapping his chin as he lectured. “High-performance flying relies on updrafts and downdrafts just like out in the open skies, and we were flying in air that wasn’t moving much. Kinda like swimming in a swamp, if you really need a comparison. I took a look at it after the performance and got some data; it looks pretty simple to fix, like the crystal inside is drawing too much power and mis-resonating.”

Twilight touched down onto the cloud pathway that lead into the coliseum. “And so we’re going to fix it.”

“Right!” He landed next to her and gave her an excited nod. “Well, that is if the doors are open. I should warn you, though, the coliseum at night can get kinda spooky.”

“Spooky, huh? Fleetfoot, do you know of the tale of Nightmare Moon…”

Cloudsdale colosseum at night was anything but spooky. Soft yellow light poured down from the top of the massive arches, creating intimate nooks and crannies behind every alcove. In the absence of the blinding daylight sun Twilight could see arteries of rainbow power beneath the clouds at her hooves pulsing with solar-magical energy, and if she looked out into the arena she could see the pulses of power pumping through the enormous structure in waves.

“Rainbow-powered technology is fascinating,” Twilight mused to Fleetfoot, who walked softly beside her. “Just look at those waves!”

“Actually, that’s kind of troubling to me,” Fleetfoot said, looking out over the same scene as Twilight with a furrow in his brow. “The power shouldn’t be on—and it wasn’t while we were flying here, or you’d see those pulses of energy from way far off. Someone turned it on right when we landed, and we’re lucky they did, too, because my key-card wouldn’t have worked otherwise!”

Twilight hardly heard his words, still fixated on the beautiful rotation of soft light. “Well, I think it’s fantastic. It makes this whole thing feel like… you know…” She kicked a hoof against the cloud below. “An adventure. Or a mystery.” Her fur bristled as she said the words, and suddenly she felt full of energy, like she had to run. “Come on!” she called, and galloped away with a skip in her step.

Fleetfoot just stared as Twilight dashed away, but in a couple moments he was caught up right beside her. “Well, if you’re that excited to see the crystal, Princess. I’d be excited too if it was my first time!”

Twilight shot him a half-glare and a grin, bumping into him as they ran. “Sssshut up! I told you not to call me that. We’re friends.” Her heart beat against the words.

“My apologies,” he said, though his grin betrayed his words as he ran ahead easily on his strong legs. “Princess Twilight Sparkle of Friendship, Bearer of the Element of Magic. Kind of a self important title, don’t you think? You don’t even seem very magical to me.”

Twilight harrumphed at his teasing. “Well you should learn to heed a Princess’s wishes!” Her horn briefly glowed purple and a zipper appeared over Fleetfoot’s mouth, quickly zipping shut.

Fleetfoot’s eyes widened and he stumbled in shock, falling and rolling over himself until he came to a soft ‘plop’ against the clouds below.

Twilight stopped, standing over him, smirking her victory in full.

Then they both started laughing. More Twilight than Fleetfoot, whose laughs were muffled by the zipper enclosing his mouth.

Twilight offered Fleetfoot a hoof, and he took it, pulling himself up so they were face to face. They shared a gaze for the longest of brief moments, and a part of Twilight wished she hadn’t sealed his lips away.

“So this is it, huh? Why bother building a stairwell if everyone in Cloudsdale is a pegasus?” Twilight asked, looking up the spire like it was a behemoth.

“So it’s enclosed. These spires don’t power down even when the rest of the buildings do—if anypony flew through the walls of these clouds, they’d be scorched by the flowing power.” Fleetfoot explained, taking the first step up the spiraling staircase.

Twilight blinked. “Wait, really? Isn’t that kind of… you know, cruel? What if someone got stuck in between? Or they didn’t know?”

Fleetfoot seemed to ponder it for a moment, but ended up just shrugging. “Rainbows aren’t electrical per-se; they’re magical, and solar. Force and heat. You’d be blasted to the floor before you could recite Celestia’s name. Really, the components would take more of a hit than a pony would.”

Once Twilight had a feel of the stairwell, she looked up to Fleetfoot, and gulped. Fleetfoot’s tail was extremely short, like most fliers, which gave Twilight an entirely unrestricted view of what usually hid underneath. She felt a rush of excitement and warmth pump through her, but couldn’t bring herself to look away, no matter how many ‘Bad Twilight!’s her conscience gave her. His sheath was a deep crimson, darker than his auburn coat, and his twin, sumptuous balls bounced as he walked.

Twilight gulped, not accustomed to the saliva gathering in her mouth. She wanted to walk closer, perhaps rub up against his side, but the stairwell was not large enough and so she had to settle for her position of relative torture.

She was glad her back end was as far away from his nose as it could be; she felt herself starting to get excited, rubbing against herself as her legs pumped back and forth.

A part of her wanted to just be able to say ‘Hey, you’re hot, like really, really hot and I’m going crazy over here and I like you and I think you like me so can we just skip the months of dating and I need you please oh Celestia.’

Another part of her wondered why she couldn’t. She was pretty, as far as Rarity had told her, and she was a Princess. And it was safe. So why couldn’t things be that simple?

She sighed and finally turned her eyes away, to the ground. The rational part of her—nearly snuffed out entirely, but still alive—knew that it would trivialize the whole thing. Cadance would scold her. Love is what makes sex enjoyable, she would say, not just sex. There has to be a story behind it.

But that didn’t stop her from wanting to pounce on Fleetfoot’s taut muscular flanks and ride him until the sun rose over the horizon.

“Beautiful,” Fleetfoot uttered as he opened the panel to the actuator. “Just beautiful.”

“U-Uh huh…” Twilight said, her eyes on Fleetfoot.

“Great, since you’ve got your magic and I don’t have an oscilloscope, do you think you can get the wavelength of this crystal as I’m tweaking the power?” Fleetfoot said, bowing to the ground and opening another access panel with a number of valves and a limiter below it.

“Sure, easy peasy,” Twilight said, lighting up her horn. As her magic wrapped around it she began to feel the vibrations of the crystal itself through her horn. A nasty, awful part of her wondered… what would it take to get the rest of her body to feel the vibrations. She pushed the envelope of her magic and…

She gasped. A lightning bolt shot through her body, and her entire form began vibrating at a beautiful speed. With a cheek-biting degree of self control, she pushed the envelope down, to encapsulate only the area she needed it to. The amplified vibrations wracked her nether-lips, rubbing against each other at a pace that, were she not gritting her teeth, would force the tongue straight out of her mouth.

She dropped her flank to the ground, assuming a sitting position with the tail-end of her firmly against the clouds below. She knew that if she kept this up the small access room would be filled with her scent in a matter of minutes and she’d be a dead giveaway—as if she weren’t already—but she could not bring herself to stop.

A small, repressed, but ever-growing part of her giggled. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to fill this room with her scent. Maybe he would notice… and that might not be such a bad thing.

She pressed herself against the ground, the fluff of the clouds below parting her nether-lips and coaxing a sweet drop of her marecum onto the floor. She gasped softly as the thought crossed her mind—a veritable pool of her own lubricant slathered across the floor, or even better, along the shaft of another.

“What’s the readout?” Fleetfoot asked, glancing back at her.

She snapped as best she could back into the position she was in before, standing upright, and clearing her voice. “Uh… seventy eight.”

Fleetfoot nodded and turned a dial. Her own marecum ran down her inner-thigh in an agonizingly slow drip.

Twilight felt in almost gross detail each and every click of the notch, the resonance of the crystal and the vibration held therein, increasing just barely. She gasped—Fleetfoot held the controls to this magnificent, magical vibrator. She was subject to his every whim. Maybe… just maybe if he realized, he would oblige her, crank it as high as it could go, and send her into blissful heaven. Then he would leap atop her, bury his muzzle in her neck, unable to contain himself any longer and—

“What now?” He asked from across the room.

“E-Eighty F...F-Four.”

“Alright. This last one should do it. Hang tight.”

Oh please no don’t say we’re done whatever you do I need this I’m losing my—

“And… we’re good. Great job!” Fleetfoot said, standing up and turning to her with a smile.

She snapped her magic away in the brief moment that her wits were surprised about her. She could feel every breath pour over her tongue. She was lucky that she could not yet really smell herself in the air, but she knew that would change quickly.

“G-great! W-wow that was… exciting…” she managed, taking a step back.

“Oh, that’s not even the fun part.” Twilight’s ears perked up. “We didn’t come all the way up here just for a silly crystal.” She could feel the tension inside permeate her to the core, through her flesh and all the way into her bones.

Fleetfoot flew to the top of the small room and motioned to a panel in the ceiling. “Now we get to fly all the way down.”

A thousand screams sounded inside Twilight’s mind, and a lock of hair bounced out of place. “Great!” she said.

She followed him—as far behind him as she could manage—to the roof of the spire, and looked out over the coliseum. The same ring of rainbow light raced around the walls of the structure but she couldn’t pay even a bit of attention this time around.

“Keep your wings outstret—”

With an audible “pomf” her wings shot open.

“Good! But be really careful. Flying up high is a lot different than flying even near the floor of Cloudsdale. If you let yourself start to fall, you won’t be able to flap hard enough to regain your balance. If that does happen, don’t worry, I’ll catch you—” A part of Twilight was already scheming, but decided her life wasn’t worth betting on being in the hooves of Fleetfoot for a couple seconds. “Just keep gliding and you’ll be fine.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hey, Twilight, are you okay? You seem really… distant all of a sudden. Sure you’re okay with the idea of jumping off an eight hundred foot spire?” Fleetfoot waved a hoof in front of her face.

“Naw, I’m fine!” Twilight lied through her teeth as she popped a cheerful smile. “Just a little spacey all of a sudden—I was just thinking about my dragon friend, Spike. He’s all alone back in the hotel. Too young to go pub-crawling.”

“Ah, I see. Well, get your wits about you, then! Let’s go for a plunge!” Fleetfoot’s wide wings stepped open and he walked to the edge of the tower. Shaking her head, Twilight did the same, looking down all the way to the ground. It occurred to her, briefly, that she should feel afraid, or at the very least enthralled, but it was as if she was watching the events of another pony’s life, completely detached from any reality that was not affixed to Fleetfoot’s flank.

“On three. One. Two… Three!”

She jumped without really thinking. Reality came back quickly. The wind battered her senses. She screamed and stretched her wings out for dear life.

And they caught air.

The sudden rush of free-falling thirty feet was still about her, though, and her heart raced like a living motor about to overheat. The wind whipped her mane about as she glided, but it blew behind her, whipping at the back of her neck and at the bridges of her ears. Out of all things she might expect to cure debilitating arousal, she was relatively surprised to find out that jumping from a very tall place only really worked for a couple of seconds. She began to look around, and her eyes found Fleetfoot above her, his wings outstretched and his limbs splayed out just far enough away that she couldn’t get a glimpse of his finer features. She wondered what a sheath would look like while flying, but even the image of a sumptuous roll of flesh flopping ungracefully in the wind seemed to spur her onwards.

She curled her wings up slightly, and rose, until she was just feet in front of him. It turned out that his sheath was not, after all, flopping in the wind—it seemed as if it was pressed firmly against his underbelly, as if it were painfully erect, but without the gorgeous hunk of meat that came with the erection. The implications that a pegasus could control the stiffness of his member for flight—and other activities—were more enthralling than if she had discovered a benevolent hive of changelings. His balls were pulled against him, contracted as if they were tense, desperately needing attention.

Twilight licked her lips. Even if Fleetfoot hadn’t been distracted with the sights of Cloudsdale from above, she couldn’t have looked away. Her loins burned like a portal to the land of sin itself, and she’d be damned if she didn’t indulge before the night was over.

She curled her wings up again, catching air and rising above Fleetfoot, until she was a safe distance behind him. She saw their landing spot—the vast, open field of fluffy nimbus affixed below the coliseum's flight-space.

After only about a minute more, she saw him land and, in the most beautiful stroke of fate she’d experienced all night, flop down onto his back to look up at the stars.

Her tongue dangled from her mouth. She flared open her wings to slow her landing and made a beeline for the underbelly of her dreams. He saw, but it was just barely too late to save him, and, with a resounding thud she landed atop his body and pressed her lips to his own.

“MmmmMMPPPPH?!”

Twilight’s tongue shot into his mouth and he about near swallowed it. She ground her body against his own and moaned like a caged animal set free.

His hooves slammed against her chest, and her face was pulled away. “Twilight, what are you doing?!”

“Mmm… oops.” She giggled, and laid her head against his chest. “Only what I should’ve done hours ago.” She purred, and licked a long line up the fur on his chest.

“Twilight, you’re in heat, aren’t you. Damn, I should have seen this coming from a mile a way… of course the guys would be stupid enough to…” He groaned, and pushed Twilight off his body.

“W… What’s wrong?” Twilight pleaded, eyes wide. “Don’t… don’t you like me? Aren’t I pretty enough?”

He stood up and turned away from her. “Yes, Twilight, you’re beautiful—you’re an alicorn for Celestia’s sake.”

“So…” Twilight buried her head in her hooves, the beginnings of tears forming on her eyes. “Are… are you gay?”

“Ugh, this is so typical of Surprise. No, I’m not fucking--” His body tensed, and he took a deep breath. “No, I’m not gay, Twilight. Surprise and the others are always trying to get me ‘laid,’ like I should care more about sleeping around because I’m a Wonderbolt than actually doing my job. You’re fine, Twilight, but I don’t want to rut you, not after one night—I hardly even know you!”

“But I know you! You’re hot, and smart, and you know calculus, and you like machines, and magic, and you’re hot, and you can fly, and you’ve got a great job…” Twilight pleaded, slamming her hooves impetuously against the fluffy clouds below.

He turned and stared her dead in the eyes. “Oh yeah? Have you ever thought what it’s like to be me? To have a bundle of mares who all want to get in my pants because I’m a Wonderbolt? What would I ask you about on a date, Twilight? What kind of music do I like?”

“Is that important?!” Twilight bellowed, rolling over onto her back. “I just need to get rutted so badly, even if it’s just for this one night, so who cares about frivolities?! Who cares about dates and music and who you are. It’s just simple chemistry! Why does it have to be so complicated…”

He stared at her from above. A long silence passed over them, the chilly night wind blowing over their solitude.

“I thought you of all mares would understand, Princess. Maybe you would when you’re not in heat. I can’t really blame you.” He turned and flared open his wings. “Good night.”

Twilight ran. She didn’t know why she ran, and she didn’t know why for two reasons: one, because Fleetfoot had done nothing wrong, and two, she realized she could teleport, and promptly prepared to do so so, back to where she had come from, back to where her friends might be and where she might find another who might be willing to give her what she needed.

She lit up her horn and disappeared.

A rush of wind assaulted her senses for the second time that night, and as the purple flash of her magic faded away, she struggled to open her eyes against a gale-force wind.

The Sky High Pub was a speck of a building beneath her, but growing at an alarming rate.

She gasped, or gasped as much as she could at 40,000 feet above Cloudsdale.

She flapped her wings, hard, as hard as she could, but could not catch air. They whipped against her like a pair of wet saddlebags. She could fire up her horn and teleport again, but she knew that the velocity would carry over and no matter where she went she would slam into the ground at the same force.

She did what she could; she started screaming, before realizing it was futile at such a speed. She lit up her horn again, as bright as she could, directing her magic nowhere, hoping that the illumination from her magic alone would catch the eye of some errant pegasus.

Tears formed in the edges of her eyes, only to be torn from their mother at the first gasp of life. Somewhere she had read that casting magic under intense emotional duress was a good idea to mess something up. She had decided to do it while she was in heat, while her magic was listening to her body rather than her mind.

And she was going to die for it.

Soarin sat outside the door to his apartment, puffing on a cigarette and staring into the stars. He always needed a cigarette after a couple rounds, and kept a box of them sitting around for just the occasion. He tried to convince himself that it wasn’t a habit, but the frequency with which he found himself outside after a romp in the blankets was enough to make it seem like he was lying to himself.

She cried. He hadn’t expected her to cry, and figured if she had, it’d be on the first go. She cried and slunk away into his bathroom, and if it had been the first time, maybe he’d try to comfort her, to be the Stallion he was years ago.

He had no ill-will with that part of himself. They’d simply just parted ways—it was more convenient that way.

A falling star caught his eye, and he smirked. His dad used to tell him to wish on falling stars, but he reckoned that there was nothing he really wanted to wish for, anymore. He resigned to wishing that someone else would take the wish—it’d be no good to waste it, his dad would have said.

The falling star didn’t burn out, however—it streaked down slowly from the sky, and looked as if it were growing bigger all the while. It occurred to him that falling stars didn’t usually glow purple, either.

He squinted his eyes. Were falling stars usually pony shaped?

A pair of strong hooves took hold of Twilight from underneath, and the rush of wind reversed direction. She didn’t bother to open her eyes to check if they were real. She just clung to the warm body beneath her and let the tears flow freely.

“...Twilight Sparkle?”

She sniffled, and nodded. The voice had come from right where her muzzle was.

“You can let go now.”

“You know my name? Are you the gatekeeper?” She shook her head. “Am I dead?”

“No. I caught you.”

She opened her eyes and looked up. “Oh.” She blinked, twice. It was a face she recognized. Soarin. “I’m… alive?”

He nodded, smiling. “I caught you.”

“You caught me?”

He groaned and rolled his eyes. “Yes, I cau--”

“You caught me! You caught me!” She wrapped her hooves around him and squeezed as tightly as she could. She made the mistake of burying her muzzle into his fur and breathing in, inhaling the musk of a Stallion that had been sweating profusely.

It smelled like eternal bliss. “You… caught me…” she murmured again, burying her muzzle into his neck.

He shivered as she threw herself against him. “Babe, you’re freezing cold…”

“Am I?” She thought for a moment. The adrenalin rushing through her heart fizzled out and her senses returned to her. “Oh Celestia, I’m freezing cold!” She wrapped her limbs around Soarin like he had just saved her life and shivered into the relative warmth of his body.

“Yes, you are. Let’s get you inside…” Soarin looked back to the dark of his room. “Uh, Twilight, please stop glowing now.”

Twilight waited patiently outside Soarin’s apartment as he ran inside, attending to the task of making sure of something vague she didn’t care much about.

What was important was that she was waiting patiently outside Soarin’s apartment.

He walked back out, a smile on his face, and made a gesture of approval.

Twilight pouted her best pout. “W-Wait… can you carry me, please?”

He shrugged. “No problem, so long as you’re willing to tell me why you were falling from the sky.” He kneeled down, and Twilight crawled atop him.

“I messed up a teleport. Really bad.”

“Ah. Weren’t you with Fleetfoot.”

She groaned. “That’s why I fudged the teleport up really bad.”

“Didn’t go well, I presume?”

A deep sigh sounded out as they walked into the dark of Soarin’s apartment. Twilight was hardly even cognizant that it was her who had sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough.” Soarin didn’t bother to turn on the lights, his green eyes meeting Twilight’s. “Hey, Twilight, do you believe in destiny?”

Twilight cocked an eyebrow. “See these wings on my back? They’re an ‘inconveniently useless when I most need them’ side effect of destiny.”

“Ah. Alright. Well, make yourself at home,” Soarin said, though Twilight was still curled up on his back.

“Sure. Bring me to that couch over there. And then like seven blankets, please”

Soarin crinkled his snout. “I said make yourself at home.”

“See these wings on my back?”

The pegasus rolled his eyes and chuckled. “Whatever you desire, Princess Snootywings.” Nonetheless, he begun walking, and leaned over so that Twilight could crawl her way onto the couch.

“I can banish you. Pseudo-legally.”

“You’d banish the pony that just saved your life?” Soarin pouted, and Twilight tried not to think it was cute.

Twilight smirked and tapped her chin. “Princesses don’t discriminate. Blankets?”

Soarin tapped on the magical fireplace that sat a couple feet from the couch. “Sorry, but, I’ve only got one extra. The others are… in the wash.” He tossed a blanket over her and sidled in next to her on the couch, giving her a comforting smile.

Twilight blinked, and smiled back, wrapping the blanket snugly around her with her magic. “So… really. Thanks for saving my life. I don’t really know what else to say...” Her eyes flicked down the sizable frame of his body. “Or what to do.”

“I don’t believe in debts,” Soarin said, scooting closer. “I think there’s some reward that comes naturally from saving a beautiful mare from her untimely death. If anything, the world should be thanking me.”

Twilight flushed red. Was he… She shuddered. He likes you pounce on him don’t give him a chance to get up you need this no NO—she couldn’t risk that again. She’d just… take it naturally, and hope that things went well. Don’t seem desperate.

Her eyes met his, and she realized that she had been talking to herself in her head for a good ten seconds instead of responding. She opened her mouth, but he placed a hoof over it, bopping her snout.

“Ssh. It’s fine. Just relax. Would you like something to drink?”

She blinked. She certainly didn’t need anything to drink, but there was a chance that if she had something then he would oblige himself as well. “Sure. I’ll have… um… the hardest that you have?”

He raised an eyebrow, a wide smile passing over his face. “Adventurous, aren’t we, Princess Snootywings?”

She looked away, directing her eyes to the fireplace. “N-No, I just need something to… warm up.” Her tail flicked of it’s own accord, though it was hidden under the blanket.

“I’m just teasing you,” he said, standing up from the couch. “I’ll be back in a second.”

She watched him as he went—his black sheath had some blue fuzz on it and hung, swaying back and forth like a pendulum that seemed to glisten in the firelight. It sent her insides into a frenzy, and, just as he turned the corner into a dark hallway, she had a hoof between her hind legs.

She pressed open her nether-lips gingerly, and a stream of her own lubricant poured forth onto the flat of her hoof. She couldn’t stifle a moan—she had never been this wet before in her life. She smeared it all over her nethers, twitching as the edge of her hoof clipped her flared labia, coaxing a dripping wink from her aching pussy.

“Twilight,” she heard a voice hiss from behind her. A hoof landed on her shoulder.

Twilight nearly screamed in shock but a cyan hoof muffled her. Rainbow Dash popped her head up from the side of the couch, her eyes wide and her hair disheveled. “Twilight, you’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered.

“Rainbow?! What are you doing here?” Her face went blank as she connected the dots. “You… and he… were?”

Rainbow nodded as if it were nothing. “You’ve got to get out of here. All that stallion wants from you is sex.”

Twilight’s eyes widened, and she felt a flush of fire pump through her body. “R-Really?”

“Yes, that’s what he does, brings a mare home every night. I just know it. If you weren’t royalty he probably wouldn’t even know your name.”

Twilight couldn’t suppress her smile as a giddy glee overcame her. “Perfect.”

“What?!” Rainbow’s face went blank as she connected the dots. “Oh… oh, no, Twilight, y-you can find a better stallion, I swear, just…”

Hoofsteps echoed from the hallway. Rainbow’s eyes widened and she left at once, quickly slinking over to the bathroom and shutting it without a sound.

Twilight wore a sultry smile as Soarin stepped back into the light of the fireplace, two drinks and a nearly-full bottle of something spectacular resting on his back.

“Here you go,” he said, returning her smile and hoofing her glass over to her. She batted her eyelashes and brought her glass to her lips, taking a sip of the liquid.

It tasted like fire that, under any other circumstance, would have revolted her. But she was willing to put aside her silly screaming tastebuds for the pursuit of what she wanted. Soarin smiled and watched her swallow nearly a quarter of the glass, shaking her head and stifling a cough as she finished.

“So...” he said, sitting down in earnest so that his body lay sprawled across the couch. His face was now much closer to hers—Twilight took another long sip. “Is it much fun being a princess?”

“Fun?” she said, lowering herself so she could look up into his eyes or over his body, hoping to get a peek past his forelegs. “There’s a lot more paperwork than you’d think.”

“So you don’t get out much?”

“Not much. But I’m out now.”

“I’ll raise a toast to that,” Soarin said, grinning and raising his glass, half-full of golden brown liquid.

Twilight raised her own glass. It was empty, save for three ice cubes at the bottom. “You’ll have to fill mine, first.”

“Of course, Princess.” He raised the bottle and filled her glass again, then rose his own, clinking it against hers. “Well, you sure don’t drink like a kissless virgin.”

Twilight blinked, glad her mouth was occupied on the rim of her glass. She half-stifled a surprised cough as she lowered it. “K-Kissless virgin…?”

Soarin gave her a wicked smile. “Just teasing. It’s just a silly rumor I heard through the grapevine.” He leaned forward, cocked his head, and let an ear droop down. “I mean, it is just a rumor, right?”

Twilight’s face went red, and she could do nothing but stare into Soarin’s green eyes as he scooted closer. Her mind jumped back to just an hour ago when she had pounced on Fleetfoot and nearly force-fed him her tongue. “W-Well, not kissless…”

Soarin raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Fun… so, gonna give me the details? Who was it?”

“It was…” she paused, and had to take a minute to let her mind catch up, slugging behind in the beginnings of an alcoholic haze. “Well… I kissed him and… I didn’t know it, but, he wasn’t a fan of me.” She buried her head between her hooves. “I… I nearly died of embarrassment.”

“So, you’ve only had one kiss? And hardly that, really. That’s… disappointing.”

“...Disappointing?” She looked up from between her hooves and gave him a worried look.

“Well, no—just, tragic, I mean. A mare like you shouldn’t have to worry about getting rejected.” He sighed, and took a sip of his drink, his eyes lazily wandering around the cozy room. “I’m disappointed for you; it’s sad to think that you’ve never felt what a real kiss is like.”

She shuddered, begging his eyes to return to hers. They seemed to be deliberately tracing around her, just about to fall over her form before they jumped away in the next instant.

“Hey… you saved my life, right?”

“As I understand it. Unless you have some gravity-reversing spell you conveniently forgot about.”

Twilight blinked. Did she? The fog of alcohol was making it very hard to remember. Probably not. “You saved my life, and I’m a princess. Doesn’t that kinda make you… you know. My knight?”

Soarin cocked an eyebrow and smiled. “In shining armor?”

She crinkled her snout and shook her head. “No, no shining armor. Please. Just my knight.” She scooted closer to him and, spurred on by the liquid courage that ran through her veins, laid her head on his outstretched hooves and looked up at him. “You missed a step, though.”

Soarin tickled her chin with one of her hooves. “Oh…? And what’s that, princess?”

“W-Well, you forgot to ask for your reward; if you save a princess, you get the honor of one kiss.” Her face was flushed red, but still she crawled closer, nuzzling herself into the fur on his chest. “They… they say that, after kissing a princess, any other kiss will pale in comparison.”

Soarin leaned his head down atop her own, skillfully avoiding the horn that protruded from it. He whispered directly into her ear; “Well, lucky for you, I’m a stallion who doesn’t have a clue about the future anyways.”

Twilight shuddered, and took a nice, long breath of his musk. She nuzzled her way up his neck, and into the concave of his chin. He ran a hoof up her neck, playing with her fur as it stood on end, finally resting it beneath her chin.

Soarin guided Twilight’s face with his hoof until it rested in front of his own. He wore a confident smile, and ran his hoof over her cheek, and through her bangs, pushing them out of her eyes. Twilight closed her eyes, letting her eyelashes tickle his cheeks.

She was shaking, almost fitfully, and she didn’t know why. She could taste his scent on the air, and could smell his essence as his breath fell over her muzzle.

She felt his lips press into her own, and reeled as the firm, pillowy flesh overtook her senses. She let out a squeak of a moan, tensing her hooves against him and leaning into the kiss. He wrapped his hoof around her neck and tilted his head. Soarin’s warmth seemed to flow into her, and, after a moment, he parted her lips with his own and let his tongue trace a long, slow circle around the edges of her mouth.

With a shudder that lasted just as long, she brought her tongue to meet his own, reeling at the warm wetness of the dance. She desperately wished she had enough hooves to wrap herself around him and quench the thirst that dripped from her nethers. She moaned deeply into him and thrust her tongue deeper, reveling in the sloppy messiness of the act.

They kissed for what couldn’t have been more than two desperately passionate minutes, before Twilight pulled her head back and opened her eyes. In a moment, Soarin did the same, and Twilight received the approval she had been looking for in the fire that glowered within them.

She pressed her snout against his fur, into his neck again, and let her tongue explore the contours of his barrel, kissing sloppily as she made her way down to where his forehooves met the front of his chest. She pushed her snout into the crook under his body, and, understanding, he raised himself up so she could crawl beneath him head-first.

She pushed her way under his form until her snout nearly rested against his sheath. He settled down atop her, letting his forehooves push down the length of her body, resting on the curves of her flanks, atop her cutie marks. Laying himself atop her, he let most of his weight fall onto his propped-up hind legs.

Twilight could wait no longer. She licked up the length of his sheath, shivering as the thing twitched against her wide tongue. He smelled of sweat tinged with vitriol and alcohol, though the latter could only have been her own breath. She felt his sheath pulse as his hardness rose from inside it, but, before it could, she rose to the tip of it and ran her tongue sloppily in circles around the inside until a stiff protrusion of meat pushed up, through her swirling tongue, and into her mouth.

Soarin groaned and shook above her, letting his hooves press into her flanks, massaging them as she swallowed his emerging member. Twilight hardly even noticed; she licked for her own pleasure, every flick and swish of her tongue feeling as if she was attending to her own drooling cunt. Wrapping her mouth around the tip, she suckled, and soon felt tip flare against her tongue and cheeks. She pushed her mouth a bit down the length, his length rubbing up against the warm folds of her tongue, and moved her hooves up to the base, squeezing gingerly.

Soon, though, Twilight found herself needing air, and pulled off Soarin’s member with a wet pop. She looked over her handiwork; Soarin’s cock was fully erect, riddled with veins across it’s white-and-blue splotches. She squeezed her hooves and watched as it throbbed upwards, smacking into his barrel with a wet smack and a groan from Soarin behind her. It was positively dripping with saliva—her saliva—and glistened in the lowlight of the fire. A drop of precum oozed from the tip and Twilight could contain herself no longer.

She pushed herself forward again, letting the width of her tongue run up the length of the member from the base, and over the flat of the tip until Soarin’s spunk was in her mouth. It tasted heady and full, deliciously bitter—Twilight moaned as she lapped it up in earnest. She moved her mouth to his low-hanging balls, and gingerly took one between her lips, sucking ever-so-softly as she ran her hooves up and down the base of his shaft. She giggled when his cock throbbed, slapping into his belly and thumping her mane as it came back down.

“B...Babe,” Soarin said, fighting back his pants. “Trust me, I ain't gonna complain if you wanna suck those like that all night, but it’s not gonna really get me anywhere. Besides, I’m dripping into your mane…”

She sucked in a tense breath at the thought, and, though she couldn’t feel the drops of precum as they got lost in the purple strands of her hair, the thought alone was enough to wrack her body with a long, needy shudder. She moved her mouth back to the tip and let her tongue loll out as she wrapped her lips around it, shivering as the precum that had gathered there dripped into her mouth. “Mmph... Nowph you’re dripphen intho my moufh,” she mumbled, her voice bouncing all over the place like a giddy schoolfilly.

Wrapping her lips around Soarin’s cock again, she figured it was time to stop messing around. Soarin squeezed his approval into the mounds of her ass, kneading them as she pushed herself down onto his cock. She felt his first medial ring push through her lips, and figured it was about all she could take, bobbing back up and letting her tongue drag up the length as she did so.

“Y...Yeah, that’s good… Just… Nngh…” he mumbled, lying his face down above her tail. She bobbed again, this time sucking with her cheeks as she came back up, and Soarin gave her a low grunt of approval.

It struck her as a bit odd—all night all she could think about was getting rut and here she was, throat-deep in a stallion who was giving her nothing back, and quivering and shuddering all the same. Images of swallowing his load, or being covered in spunk sent an ecstatic thrill through her body. And every groan and shudder that came from Soarin only pleased her more; it validated her in a way she couldn’t put into words, even if she wasn’t drunk.

She popped off his cock and breathed in air, kissing the tip of it with her lips and tongue as she rested her muzzle against it. “Are you close?”

He chuckled. “Not… Not quite. I’m getting there, though. Why, you want to sw--” He gave a mixture of a growl and a moan that cut off his words as Twilight bobbed back down over his length.

It was sloppy, no, more than sloppy. Saliva and other liquid piled up behind her lips, soaking his member as she came up from a bob. Strands of her spit stuck to her chin, and even to her hooves as she rubbed him up and down. She heard soft squelches with every bob as soaked skin rubbed against something or other.

His balls, at some point, started to sway, and she realized that Soarin was rocking his hips ever so slightly against her as she sucked, feeding her more and more of his length without her even realizing it; she was able to swallow more than half of it, now.

Soarin gave a deep groan, and gave one of her cutie marks a light smack. “Oh… fuck. I swear, if you weren’t so good at this I’d be… I’d be balls-deep in that cute little dripping pussy of yours…”

Twilight moaned, and pushed herself deeper onto his cock, hearing and feeling her nether-lips squelch open as she winked. She felt his member push against her throat, but she was used to the feeling by now, and simply readjusted herself to fit more down her mouth.

She lit up her horn, and wrapped her magic around his swaying balls, pulling them out and squeezing them against his body one after the other. He moaned a curse, and Twilight felt his cock twitch against her tongue as she bobbed down on it. His hips began rocking more erratically, jumping forward or twitching back, no longer the smooth motion that she had grown accustomed to. She started swirling her tongue over the tip before she bobbed back down with every push.

Soarin’s kneading had given way to nipping, or slapping and his lungs flared against her back in unison with his tip flaring against her throat. His moans had become grunts. She could feel her ass jiggle as she moved her whole body forward to suck as much of his cock as she could manage. He abandoned all pretense and fucked her mouth earnestly, pinning her to the couch with his weight atop her.

He buried himself as deep as he would go in Twilight’s muzzle.

And then he came in her mouth.

A thick, heavy spurt of cum sloshed into the back of Twilight’s throat. Soarin pulled back and slammed into her again, filling her with rope after rope of salty, bitter, delicious spunk. It covered her throat, her tongue and everywhere in between. She moaned against his shudders, lapped up as much as she could, but could not bring herself to swallow as he pumped more and more into her narrow mouth.

She pulled off, feeling a shot of cum adorn her lips as she did so, and let his cock rest against her tongue as lines of batter covered her mouth and muzzle. She massaged his cock with her hooves until all he gave her was deep, wet exhales and dribbles of cum that ran down her tongue and onto the couch below.

His legs buckled, and he leaned down onto his forehooves to refrain from crushing her. “Myah…” she mumbled, trying to form words but having little success with a full mouth.

“What?” Soarin whispered back, between laboured breaths.

She rolled in her tongue and gulped down the pond of cum that had gathered in her mouth, quivering as it slid down her throat. “More. I n-need you to rut me right now,” she whined, squirming underneath him. “Please…”

“Twilight, babe… I don’t know if you know how this works, but I need some time to recharge.”

She lit up her horn, wrapping Soarin in her magic, and concentrated, gritting her teeth as the magic built slowly within her, but the spell went off without more of a problem than an easily-ignorable headache.

Suddenly his legs were steady again, and his limp cock had been sucked back into the sheath. “W-Woah… what did you do to me?”

“Localized time reversal,” she said through a gasp, grinding her wetness into the drenched couch beneath her. “Now, please… please…” She crawled forward and sunk her mouth over the tip of his sheath, fitfully sucking and licking it.

“You don’t need to do that. The view from back here is good enough” Soarin said, taking a deep breath and lifting himself up from her. “And you don’t need to ask me twice.”

Twilight lifted her hindquarters and looked over her shoulder. Her nether lips were still dripping down onto the couch; a pool of her lubrication had gathered in one of the divots in the couch, the rest of it smeared across the leather like someone had badly mopped up a spill.

“Oh, no,” Soarin said with a grin, planting his hooves on the round of her ass. “Not in the air quite yet. I think we’ll make use of the little mess you’ve made…” He pushed her flanks downwards, back into the swamp of her own desire, and positioned himself behind her, his cock growing rapidly as he looked down upon her, a bestial glint in his eyes.

He leaned forward, picking up Twilight’s front half until her cunt was parallel to the soppy leather couch, and rested her back against his chest. He positioned his member below her pussy and pushed slowly between the couch and her pussy above.

Twilight shook and writhed as he pushed her nether-lips apart slightly as his member slid below them, a flood of desire that had built up behind them drooling down and soaking his cock. He planted rough nip-kisses up the length of her neck and placed his hooves on her stifles, pushing her thighs so her pussy ground into him.

He growled into her ear: “Tell me what you want, Twilight.”

She shuddered, her sensitive lips quivering against his cock as it brushed up against them. “P-Please… don’t tease me, I… I just want…” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t take it, I need you inside me.”

“Need me?” He ground his cock into the passage again, roughly. “That sounds like something a naughty pony would say…”

She nodded her head quickly, eyes squeezed shut. “Y-Yes, I’m a…”

He spanked her with the flat of one hoof and ground her pussy into him with the other. “You’re a naughty pony, alright, dripping all over me like that.” He ran his tongue up and down her neck. “I know what you want… you want to get rutted, don’t you?”

She shuddered at the word. “Mmhm… please,” she whispered. “R...Rut--”

He spanked her again, and her words gave way to a deep, guttural moan. She threw her head back over his shoulder and Soarin took the opportunity, biting down on her neck and suckling hard. “Say it.”

“R-Ruh…” He spanked her again and again she moaned. “Rut me...”

“That’s not loud enough,” he growled, pulling his cock back and teasing her entrance. He ran his flared tip around her lips, peeking them open but holding her back with his hooves. “Come on, now, Twilight.”

Twilight bit her lip. “Please, for the love of Celestia,” she screamed, hoping dearly to said goddess that Rainbow had evacuated the building through the clouds. “Rut me, now!”

Soarin bit down on her neck, spanked her again, and shoved his length deep inside of her. She screamed again, a deep, low moan, her netherlips shuddering, squeezing as his warmth slid inside of her. He stayed inside her, unmoving. “Lean forward. Wings out.”

Immediately she did as she instructed, her front half flopping into the couch in front of her and extended her wings as stiff as they would go. Soarin shifted, and she could feel him shift inside of her, and wrapped his hooves around the base of her wings.

Then he rut her.

He growled and slammed his length into her with a beautiful squelch, pushing her lips as far open as they could go. Twilight’s eyes rolled up. Her tongue lolled out of her lips. Soarin pulled back, and, with another visceral grunt, he impaled her again. The folds of her lips quivered around him as he rut her like an animal and lubricant slopped everywhere, coating his cock in a thick sheen and splashing onto his thighs. She winked and dripped every time he pulled out and clenched down on his cock every time he pushed in and she loved every millisecond of it. Hooves tensed against the couch in an attempt to push back on him, to swallow more of his member, but mostly she just revelled in the fact that he was there, atop her, grunting and pulling on her wings and rutting her.

The moans started with just a squeak each time he pushed into her, but grew into breathy exhales of approval, into moans and groans as she writhed and pushed against him, finally evolving into loud, unrestricted screams, thrashing her head and mane back and forth with each thrust, shouting “Yes!” and “Oh, fuck,” and a slew of indiscernible words whenever they rose to the front of her throat. She pounded her hooves against the couch and flapped her wings and winked and moaned as he fucked her in earnest.

Then he stopped. Strong hooves pulled on her forelegs and, without ever pulling out of her, he flipped her over onto her back. She wrapped her hooves around his neck and shuddered as he, teeth gritted and wings straight out, fucked her again. He slammed into her with the same ferocity, sweat dripping down his fur and onto her body. He bent down and bit at her neck, grunting into her ears, and best of all, pushed his mouth against her own and thrust his tongue inside, writhing it around like a being of Discord.

There was only one speed—as fast and rough as he could manage. He pulled out of her, panting, and without a word she jumped up, positioning herself on the coffee table beside the couch and thrusting her ass into the air, wiggling it in the light of the fire. He rut her face down on the coffee table and smacked her ass as he did it. He carried her to the kitchen and rut her on the countertop face up, holding their bodies together.

He pulled out and stared her in the eyes, growling only “Bed,” before she galloped into the bedroom, her marecum dripping down her thighs as she ran. She bent herself over in the dark room, ass up, and he approached her slowly, ceremoniously, and placed his hooves on her flanks.

He positioned himself behind her, dropping his weight onto her as he thrust his cock into her clitoris. She screamed, hardly even hearing him growl “I’m going make a mess of your cunt...” like there was no other natural order they could follow.

He pushed inside her and she moaned all the air out of her lungs. She clenched around him, milking him with her pussy. He slammed into her, past his medial ring, wide enough to have split her open at the beginning of their rut, and then even further. There was no pain; her body wouldn’t let her stop, no matter what the conditions. Her cunt drooled all over her legs and down his cock; she couldn’t tell, anymore, what was sweat and what had dripped from between her legs.

Her body tensed, and shook, and she felt the pressure that had been building all night cumulate and form something discernible, predictable; she looked over the precipice of ecstasy with it, letting it build, swirl, overtake the rest of her senses. “Soarin…” she whispered, before a particularly rough thrust sent her mind reeling. “Soarin! I… MmhmMM,” she couldn’t form the words, but she could tell he knew from the depth of his thrusts, from the smacks to her flanks, from the rough, graveley groans that poured past her ears and fed the beast inside of her.

He rolled his head back and took the base of her tail with one of his hooves, pulling, doing anything to bring himself deeper into her. The tip of his cock flared inside and he leaned his full weight into his thrusts, finally burying the entirety of his member inside of her. His stifles slapped against Twilight’s sopping flanks, meshing together with the gulping sounds of her pussy. Leaning his weight forward on top of her, he took her ear between his teeth, his grunts and moans growing into bestial roars.

She couldn’t take a second more; her nether-lips quivered and shook and the feeling of absolute fullness overcame her.

Just as Soarin buried himself deep inside her with a shudder, she screamed and came. Her body shook and her pussy clenched, swallowing the hot ropes of his seed as they slathered her deep inside. An utter fountain of her marecum dripped down Soarin’s shaft and balls, and down the inside of her trembling thighs.

Soarin did not pull out and thrust again; he stayed deep inside her, his cum filling what little space was left up between her walls and squeezing between his quaking member and her shuddering folds. Gush after veritable gush of dripping batter leaked out from her pussy in spurts, only to be smushed between their fur.

She felt him fill her up and it only made her cum harder, wriggling her body as her nether-lips kissed the full length of Soarin’s shaft. Her hooves curled, and her spine flexed, back arching as the waves of their sex dribbled out of her.

Finally, Soarin’s legs collapsed, and he fell down on top of Twilight, still buried inside of her. Aftershocks shook Twilight’s body and the haze in her mind began to clear. Lying there, with Soarin panting atop her, all his love shared and swallowed, she’d never felt more content.

With a final squelch, Soarin pulled his limp member out of her and let his spunk drool onto the bedsheets below. Twilight shivered and smiled, wrapping her hooves around him and closing her eyes, feeling every drip of his love pour between her gaping folds. She pushed her legs together and let out a soft moan, the warmth of his milk squishing inside of her.

Soarin wrapped his hooves around her and gave a final, long shudder. He didn’t say anything; he simply crawled behind her and pulled her body close to his, tracing long circles around her flanks with his hooves and kissing her ear.

She closed her eyes, nestled against him, and, to the sound of his slowing heartbeat, fell quickly into sleep.

A final, guttural scream sounded through the bathroom door, close enough that they were surely tangled up on the bed. Rainbow trembled, curled up into a ball at the foot of the door.

She hadn’t been strong enough. If only she had slammed the door open, huffing and puffing and screaming, she could have saved Twilight. But she hadn’t opened the door. She hadn’t moved an inch, save for shivering on the blue-and-yellow bathroom mat below her.

How could she let this happen to Twilight?

How could Twilight do this to me?

No. Can’t blame Twilight. Twilight had never done anything like this before; she was too naive, defenseless. Maybe Twilight had been relying on her, waiting for her to step out and save her.

She wasn’t moaning like she was waiting on you.

She waited, and tried not to think. Tried not to imagine it any more. And then, when their shufflings were cold and in the ground, and when the sky outside the window began to turn, she opened the door.

A revolting mix of sex, alcohol, and sweat wafted into Rainbow’s nose, nearly bringing back the bile that had finally settled inside of her.

She slunk out of the door, pausing to look over them, bodies entangled in a heap on the bed.

Slut.

Don’t pretend you’re better than her. She had no choice—you did.

She liked it.

She shook her head. Pushed the thoughts from her mind, lest she learn to hate another part of herself.

It was odd. As the sun peeked over the horizon out the windows, Soarin and Twilight, wrapped in each other’s limbs and sleeping soundly, looked almost serene. Like they would wake up in the morning, and giggle, and kiss sweetly. Talk about the races. Get ready for practice.

Her hooves trembled underneath her. She had to close her eyes before she could bring herself to turn away.

It was fake. She couldn’t imagine wanting something like that with him. Not in a thousand years. The visions were fragments of a shattered dream.

She hesitated as she stood in the threshold of his front door.

Only for a moment; but she had.

Author's Note

Sorry if this is rougher than what you're used to; it's, for the most part, unedited.

A lot of people felt very strongly against this sudden shift in tone and presentation; I did what I could to talk about what I was going for, but the majority of it is really pretentious rambling analysis about my own stuff. If you feel like you want some extra clarification, please read this:
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/138193/heat-rises#comment/3391091

I wish I could, in good concience, let my work stand on it's own, and let people interpret it for what they will. I wish I didn't feel the need to talk about my own intentions, and, like the classic writers of old, leave that slot for a reader's involvement in the text that they read open, subject to their own whims and beliefs.
But I'm not a classic writer of old. I'm just someone who's trying to write something I can be proud of, and I am proud of what I wrote at this moment in time.

That's why that comment of clarification exists. Thanks for reading.

Expectations

Twilight placed her hooves against the silver stallion's chest. She didn't know his name. She didn't know where he had come from. She didn't even know his face; it was concealed by a half-mask that covered all but his eyes of blue ice. All that mattered is that he had saved her from her prison, and now they were safe in the jungle in the dead of the night.

His eyes were enough. Their muzzles pressed together as they nuzzled each other before he stole her breath with a kiss. She reeled, tensing and relaxing, and pulled his chest against her own.

She felt his hooves on her flanks, squeezing a soft moan from her lips. She thought herself more reserved, but there was no resisting his caress.

Their bodies were one, limbs entangled as they drank in one another. A concerto of violins strummed a chord with each mutual flick of their tongues. Every brush of their fur lit sparks of color into the dark of the night beyond.

Twilight pulled back her head, eyes wide as she gazed down the mysterious stallion.

"Take me," she whispered, the light dancing in her eyes. "I can't wait another moment."

"Twilight..." he murmured, leaning forward to steal another kiss. Shivers ran down her spine as her name escaped his lips. She closed her eyes and pressed herself against him

"Twilight." His voice grew sterner, but she closed her eyes tighter, waiting for the unison that would make her feel whole.

Three loud bangs rang out like someone had smacked a gong. "Twilight!" She squinted her eyes open, bewildered in part by the words, but more at how bright the night-time jungle had gotten. The stallions hooves were replaced by the coarse blankets and sheets of her bed— not exotic or exciting in the least.

She shot up in bed and let out a loud groan. The windowpane just a step from where she lay shuddered thrice as a hoof knocked on it, catching Twilight's ire. Behind the glass door of the library’s porch sat Rarity and Fluttershy. Rarity had a panicked look on her face, her mane was frazzled, and she pranced back and forth in place. Fluttershy tried to hide that she was there at all. The sun beyond was orange, only just peeking over the horizon. With a deep, disgruntled sigh, Twilight lit her horn up and opened the window, letting the two ponies in from the lingering morning air.

"Oh thank goodness you woke up," Rarity prattled immediately, stepping into the library and over to Twilight's bedside. "Twilight, we have a serious problem."

Why wasn't there a spell to skip mornings. Too much... movement... and words, and just... morning. "Myeh?" she mumbled, lying her head back down against the pillow.

An airy yawn sounded from across the room as a tall, lanky Spike sat up, peeking his head up over the foot of the bed. "Good morning... uh..." he started to say, stopping as he laid eyes on the two frantic intruders. The rest of his greeting was promptly replaced with a guttural groan. "Ugh. Don't tell me you all have to save the world again? Can't they wait until, like... eleven?"

"Spike!" Rarity yelped, recoiling and turning to face the bookshelf in the corner of the room, hooves immediately flying up to her mane. "I didn't know you were still sleeping in Twilight's room. Aren't you a bit old for that?"

"Where else would I sleep? On the floor downstairs between the shelves?" He stood up and stretched his long limbs into the air, giving a yawn before resting his eyes on Rarity, still battling her mane with her hooves. “Here, let me get you a hairbrush… Anyways, I can’t really trust myself to wake up without Twilight yelling at me to get out of bed,” Spike continued as he walked to the armoire on the other side of the room, retrieving the brush and returning to the bedside. “But I could get used to having you two do it instead. Much less… shouty.”

"But in such a small bed?" Fluttershy stepped between them, walking from the balcony on the right side of the room to the foot of the bed where Spike lay in the back. "It's practically just a blanket and a pillow..."

"I dunno, I kinda like sleeping on hard stuff," he said with a shrug. "Guess it's a dragon thing, since we're meant to sleep on gold and gemstones and all."

Twilight blew the mane out of her eyes. Why did it feel so hard to wake up? Even Spike was up and coherent and...

Her mind traced itself back to the dream. She pushed the blankets off herself, but the flushed, full feeling of warmth lingered still. ‘Oh no...’ The dots began to connect. The air around her was sour with sweat and arousal. "Ugh..." she uttered rolling over and staring at Rarity. "So that's why you're here?"

Rarity gave a pained, quivering smile. "Oh, partly my dear. But it's... eh... a little more complicated than just that… Um, Spike, could you be a dear and run downstairs and make some tea for us girls?"

Twilight stuck an abject hoof into the air. "Coffee for me. Please. Thanks."

Spike grumbled something inaudible but traipsed out of the room with a parting yawn.

Rarity smiled and sat on the side of the bed, Fluttershy following up onto the foot of it. "Twilight, dear, you might not want to sit up for this. I presume you've already noticed that... erm..."

"We're in season," she grumbled. "Doesn't it usually come a couple weeks later than this? I really don't need this right now..."

Rarity brought a hoof to her mouth and coughed into it. "Yes. But... you keep a calendar, no?"

Twilight nodded.

"So... you remember what day it is?"

"Uhh..." Twilight rolled her eyes upwards. It was spring. March. "March 4th?"

"Yes, dear, but what is March 4th? What did we all plan for this weekend?"

Twilight blinked as the memory hit her and sat up in bed, wings unfurling in record time. "Oh no." With a couple flaps she was airborne, hovering around the room in small circles. "Oh no, oh no, oh no... We can't go to Cloudsdale like this!" She looked around the room as her brain panicked itself awake.

The wooden door at the end of the room slammed open just as Rarity opened her mouth to interject, and Applejack came stomping through. "I ain't goin' to Cloudsdale like this, no way, no how. I hate the clouds, I hate the thin air, I hate this damn heat and there ain't no way you're gettin' me in that balloon."

The ponies stared slack-jawed as Applejack huffed her mane out of her eyes and sat her haunches down in the center of the room.

"But Applejack, we never go to Cloudsdale!” Pinkie whined, stepping through the open window from the second story balcony. “I've been excited about this trip for weeks! Lighten up, let yourself have a little fun!" Pinkie singsonged the last word, skipping over and sitting next to the slack-jawed ponies now staring her way.

"Bluh... A... W... What! How did you all even get in here!" Twilight blabbered, landing herself back on her bed to steady herself.

Applejack cocked an eyebrow at Twilight. "Spike let me in."

"Fluttershy carried me up," Rarity chimed in, catching an 'I-didn't-mean-you' look from the disgruntled alicorn.

Pinkie Pie stuck out her tongue. "Duh! Heat rises!" She rolled her eyes. Without a word more of explanation, Pinkie started shivering violently and gave an experimental sniff. "Oooh! Tea time!" She cartwheeled through the room and disappeared as quickly as she had come.

Rarity raised her hoof in the air and cleared her throat. "This is all entirely besides the point, my dears. We've been planning this trip to see the Wonderbolts for months. Dash is always there for us when we need her, and we all know something trifling like being in season is only going to be a challenge for that mare..."

"I...I'm not in season, Rarity," Fluttershy chimed in. "I never am."

Applejack huffed and stomped her hooves against the wooden floor. "Well ain't you just the lucky one?"

Rarity's eyes widened as the words left Applejack's mouth, but Fluttershy only sighed, turning away from the rest of the group. "I guess I am sort of lucky. It does seem like the season is awfully troubling for you all. I can go to Cloudsdale alone with Rainbow Dash if the rest of you can't make it. I'll be sure to take care of her."

Twilight let out a long breath of relief. "Alright! Perfect. Fluttershy can just go in our place, and—"

"Twilight! Think rationally!" Rarity stood up, all eyes on her, and began pacing around the room. "If Rainbow’s eye caught a nice-looking stallion she could out-fly Fluttershy in a second if she had the mind to. So whether we like it or not..." She cast a quick glare towards Applejack. "We must all go to Cloudsdale with Rainbow Dash."

Ignoring the disapproving glare, Applejack stood up from where she sat. "I. Ain't. Going. This ain't up for discussion, Rares." She punctuated her words with a stomp. "I ain't just being selfish; I can't control myself like this, and I ain't the kind to go off willy-nilly with any which stallion I happen to meet."

"Which is why I'll be watching over you all evening, and why you'll be doing the same for me," Rarity said, returning Applejack's harsh stare. "But regardless, we have a duty to attend."

"I might not really 'get it' the way you two do— my heat is usually pretty tame compared to the average," Twilight said, raising a curious hoof, "But I've got to say, Rarity, you're pretty adamant about this."

Rarity pushed her snout into the air. "As the rest of you should be. It's basic friendship, Twilight. More than she'd ever admit, Rainbow Dash cares for us deeply. She's always there for us when we need it, and that includes cutting into her training regimen to make time when we need her help."

Rarity looked around the room, her snout crinkling at the blank faces staring back at her. "Applejack, surely you remember last year when Braeburn and his orchard found itself under duress of that awful plague?"

Applejack narrowed her eyes and turned away from the unicorn, refusing to answer.

"The train would have taken days. His orchard would have been gone. Who flew you all the way out there in a matter of hours? Who saved your family's business in Appleoosa?"

"Y'all know who..." Applejack grumbled, still facing the wall.

Rarity turned to the other side of the room, where Fluttershy and Twilight sat together on the bed. "Fluttershy, have you ever flown eight hours straight carrying another pony with you?"

"Oh, no... I can't imagine I could fly even a couple minutes carrying another pony," Fluttershy replied, playing with her hooves. Her eyes darted between Applejack and Rarity. "Um, I bet something like that isn't even a big deal for Rainbow Dash, though..."

Applejack groaned and slumped to the floor. “Fine, fine, I see what you’re gettin’ at, Rares, and you’re right. She does deserve it. But that don’t make it any easier to just up and abandon my wits with nothin’ to count on!”

“Why, Applejack...” Rarity huffed, stretching her snout upright. “Nothing to count on? You have my word I will watch over you!”

“Your word?” Applejack snorted. “Your word ain’t gonna do nothin’ to stop me from gettin’ what I want if push comes to shove. Nah— I need more than that. I need a deal.”

“Fine,” Rarity said with a roll of her eyes and a wave of the hoof. “As if a silly little deal is more sacred than a lady’s word, but I’ll indulge. What do you propose?”

Applejack’s eyes narrowed, a toothy grin adorning her face. “Heh heh… then here’s what I propose, little lady. If I crawl under the bedsheets with a pony I’ve hardly ever met before, you gotta do the same.” Now it was Applejacks turn to thrust her snout in the air, peering over her unicorn friend as if her words had solved a sphinx’s riddle.

Rarity’s jaw dropped for the briefest of moments before she regained control, taking a step back and lowering her snout, looking at the farmer from behind her bangs.

Fluttershy stepped forward between the two, a martyr for the daggers flying from each other’s gazes. “Now, Applejack, don’t you think that’s a bit much to put on the line?”

“Well I reckon that’s right on the money, Fluttershy. Sides, I know better than anypony here that I’d rightly be to blame, no matter what circumstances I’m pushed into,” Applejack said with a curt nod. “But way I figure it if someone wants you to do somethin’ when you know in your gut it just ain’t gonna turn out right they gotta be willin’ to call your bet.”

“Fine!” Rarity took a step forward and extended her hoof in front of her. “It’s a deal, if that’s what it takes.”

“Well, well, well…” Applejack clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Ya’ll got more gumption in you than I reckoned.” She took a ceremonious step forward and met Rarity’s hoof with her own. “It’s a deal, then— ya’ll won’t hear another lick out of me against it."

Rarity exhaled as if she had been holding her breath throughout the whole conversation. "Wonderful. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check on what's making the tea take so long..." Rarity said, trotting much more quickly than she had to towards the proper exit of the room.

Twilight smiled, glad to be done with the fervor and panic that had permeated her morning. She sat up, stretching her wings and yawning, and hopped down from her bed. Her magic wrapped took hold of the hairbrush that Rarity had abandoned on her bedside table, pushing it through her frazzled mane as she went to close the window that her friends had come through.

A peculiar sight caught her attention as she looked out the window. Rainbow Dash was hovering a building’s length away from her window, flying in slow circles and clicking her hooves together. Twilight stepped out onto the balcony.

"Rainbow?"

Rainbow's ears perked up and she turned her head to where Twilight stood. "Oh. Hey Twilight! Good, you're up!"

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Whether I want to be or not. I'm surprised you are, though."

Rainbow covered the distance between them with a few flaps of her wings. "Ha! Me too. But it's impossible to sleep through... wait. Haven't you noticed yet?"

"Ugh. Let's just say it gave me a rather rude awakening," Twilight said, stepping back from the balcony and gesturing for Rainbow to land. "Come on inside. Everyone else is already here."

"Oh?" Rainbow's eyes widened. "For the trip? Huh. That's what I came over here to talk to you about, actually." She stepped through the balcony door and scanned the room. "I just wanted to say I would totally understand if you guys couldn't come on account of... well, you know. I..." Rainbow gulped and looked around the room. "I can handle myself just fine, usually, and I know Cloudsdale is really far to travel like this. If you guys don't want to come—"

"Hold your horses..." Applejack spoke up. "There ain't no way in hell ya are gonna get away with goin' off to Cloudsdale by yourself, heat or not." She tipped her hat and cast a sheepish glance to Twilight. "Way I figure, you deserve it more than we can say with just words. Sides, who's gonna keep you in check if we ain't there?"

Neither Twilight nor Rainbow could stifle their growing grins.

"Well, I guess that settles it then," Twilight said, letting out a long, tense breath, and wiping the sweat from her forehead. "We're going to Cloudsdale."

This was a horrible idea. Twilight kept her mind on her breathing; In and out. In... and... ah! She turned her face at the last moment, nearly bumping into a Stallion from behind, a pale warmth inside wondering what would happen if she had. The thirty-foot-wide pathways of Cloudsdale Colosseum were completely covered by ponies from ground to floor, pegasi flying more tightly knit than she had ever seen before. She wondered if they weren't just standing on one another.

Archways of smooth-as-steel cloud circumvented the sweeping corridors of the arena. Only fifteen feet to their left, ponies behind carts and cubbies and even airships shouted for patrons to come and partake in their greasy wares. To the right, the arena had games where one could fly in a wind tunnel to see how their speed matched up to the legendary wonderbolts, or where one could win prizes for flying through hoops or tossing balls through rings. It appeared that a four foot tall fence was the only thing between the edge of the colosseum and the literal skyscrapers in the metropolis beyond.

The crowd was an exercise in insanity for the Alicorn, keeping her tail sandwiched to the back of her hide while keeping her head down and doing her best to avoid the errant glances of passersby. A glance backwards told her that the others were doing just as poorly; they waded through in a single-file line with Fluttershy and Spike in the back. Every face pointed forward, waiting for the slow drip of ponies into the stadium to carry them to their destination.

Twilight's eyes widened as she felt a mouth clamp down on the tip of her tail, nearly pushing herself through the cloud floor in surprise. "Applejack! What the hay?"

"Don't ya'll start with me, Twilight,” Applejack whimpered. "I... I need a distraction. Just one look up and I'm face-to-face with a sea of... of... ugh! Rarity's the one who should be complainin', what with gettin' the tail-end of me!"

"H-Huh?" Rarity said, blinking and turning her gaze away from the pegasi floating above them. "Did somepony say my name?"

"Rarity!" Applejack flipped her head around to look behind her. "Q-Quit that! Keep your head down! Get a hold of yourself, filly!"

"Oh, shush, dear, there's no harm in looking..." Rarity purred, letting her head rock back and forth.

"Rarity's got the right idea!" called Pinkie Pie from behind her.

"Pinkie! Don't encourage her!" Applejack growled, stomping the ground to accentuate her point. Her hoof dug into the cloud layer below like it was made of powdery snow. "Ugh! Great damn Celestia I swear if I ever..."

Rainbow cackled from near the end of the line. "Oh man, Applejack, if you're getting so flustered from a couple of pegasi above you I don't know how you're going to manage the show. Real pegasus muscle flying near the speed of sound in spandex. I...Ehheh..." Rainbow shuddered and her face flushed deep red.

“Oooh… Don’t tell me you’re thinking what I’m thinkin’, Dashie?” Pinkie’s eyebrows bounced up and down and she turned to face Rainbow behind her, grinning wickedly when she caught a glance of her face. “Yup. You sure are thinking.”

Rainbow gulped, drooping her head as if trying to hide behind herself. “W-Well, can you blame me? These are the Wonderbolts we’re thinkin’ about here.”

“Oh, Dashie,” Pinkie crooned, swiveling her head upside down. “You can always trust Pinkie to never blame, judge, or taboo! Well… not since Zecora taught me better, anyways. I just wonder if we can’t get one of those Wonderbolts as a wonderful extra-special birthday present for Dashie.”

Rainbow Dash’s pupils receded to pinpricks, followed by a rapid barrage of blinks . “Y-You don’t think they would…”

Rarity rolled her eyes, looking back from where she stood in front of them. “No question. With a body like yours? The only one who even stands a chance of competing is Fluttershy. But if you’re not interested, Rainbow, you could always put in a good word for a friend…”

“Wait, what did you say?” Spike chimed in, suddenly paying attention.

“Well, why can’t both of you, silly?” Pinkie interrupted, bouncing in place.

“In actuality? C-Can you imagine the scandal!” Rarity gasped, her face flushing red. “Famous Wonderbolt and aspiring dressmaker? Why, the thought alone is just… just...” Rarity finally turned her eyes to the ground and gave a small shudder.

“You know what they say, Rarity…” Pinkie said with a grin. “Controversy sells! That’s why I make my cupcakes extra-super delicious. People can’t believe their tastebuds, so they go and tell all their friends to make sure for them!”

Rarity opened her mouth to interject but a deafening roar erupted from the ponies in the crowd. “Heads up, girls!” Twilight called from the front, pretending to ignore their bickering. “It looks like they opened the gate!”

Clouds. Applejack wasn’t sure exactly what it was about ‘em, but she never did quite trust clouds. Just isn’t natural for a pony grounded her whole life to be standin’ so far up in the sky just like it was the earth. It was a creeping kind of uncanny that made her appetite smaller and her hooves shakier than they had any business being.

Yet there she was, sandwiched into a cloud seat like it was the last dissipating cloud in the sky keeping her from plummeting to an ironic earthen death. She’d have preferred a hard, uncomfortable wooden bench with the heads of nails sticking out of it any day. Firm. Dependable. She pushed her hoof into the seat behind her, which seemed to suck up her flesh.

She shuddered and pulled her hoof out, shaking it off as if it had been covered in slime.

An announcer over a megaphone blared something she couldn’t care less about. On any other day she could see herself sitting forward, smiling warmly, enjoying the sunshine on her face, watching the pegasi do their thing.

She hid most of her head under the brim of her hat, not bothering to watch the show above. Though the sun was baking her alive, her sweat came cold and clammy.

The worst of it all was her friends. They all were seated more-or-less nicely, legs all crossed of course, putting on as best a smile as they could manage. It was like it was an itch they could hum and ignore.

Not for herself. Inside, raging waves of heat stole her ability to think and made it seem like her ponybits were shifting around. She panted like she needed something to drink, but no amount of water would quench her thirst.

She sat forward, sprawling her body out on every inch of the seat she could manage, and turned an eye towards Rarity. Rarity…

She was smiling, genuine smiling at how plum and pleased she was. She ran her eyes over the audience like vases in a store, smirking each time she found one that would fit on her proverbial mantle. We have a duty to dash, she says… we NEED to be there. Applejack felt a boiling inside, but it sure as sugar wasn’t from the sun this time around.

The announcer said something that brought the audience to whooping and hollering. There were so many damn ponies around.

Like a bolt of lightning, three pegasi flying in triangle formation erupted from the bottom of the stadium, leaving a crackling trail of smoke behind. Applejack cocked an eyebrow.

That is, until the gust that followed them hit her, stetson flying from her head and swirling up into the air. She jumped up at it immediately, but it blew just out of her hooves, and off to the rows behind her.

Applejack’s nostrils flared and she reared up on her legs, uncaring about the spectators whose view she blocked. She opened her mouth and prepared a curse so devious that mothers ten rows back would have to evacuate.

“Um, Applejack?”

Applejack blinked, staring face-to-face with Spike, who happened to be the one occupying the seat behind her. In his claw he held a familiar brown hat.

“Cloud pixies try to take this from ya?” Spike’s words were answered by a swipe of the hoof, and in a second the hat was atop Applejack’s head again. With a simple push a leather string affixed it firmly to her chin, and Applejack turned, climbing down from her perch. With only a smattering of hot, angry breaths, Applejack turned and walked into the halls of the stadium.

As much as she hated the clouds, Applejack kept her eyes pinned to them like they were beautiful fields of grass. She just needed to walk. Any direction would do, so long as she didn’t leave the actual stadium, unable to find her way back to her seat, but the only thing that could bring her comfort was sheer mechanical repetition.

Well. There was another thing. She blew at the mane that fell in front of her eyes, whisking the thoughts as far away as she could.

Of course, the thoughts were in a playful mood and felt like trampling over Applejack’s mental orchard some more. The more she tried to round them up and tell them to shoo, the more they laughed in her face.

What I wouldn’t do for a stallion who could round these critters up like the varmint they are and… oh damnit! She shuddered as she evicted the dream-stallion, two feet taller than her and twice as muscled, dripping from his recent casual dip in the lake, from her… damnit damnit damnit!

Just as she was about to go insane, she felt a beautifully distracting push on her side. Before her stood a middle-aged, wall-eyed stallion who happened to be clearing his voice.

“What?!” she barked, reeling back immediately at the intensity of her own voice. “Er… heh, I mean…”

“Move, lady. You’re standing in front of the condiments,” he said, cocking an eyebrow and pointing a hoof behind her.

“C...Condiments. Right. ‘Scuse me,” she said, hastily tipping her hat and stepping to the side… only to barrel into the chest of another stallion, twice as big as the last. Peanuts went everywhere, scattering to the stadium floor where hundreds of hooves preceded them.

“What are you, blind?!” he growled, words muffled slightly by the now-empty tray of peanuts, glaring down at her for a moment before bending onto his forehooves to gather them. “Tourists…”

Applejack just groaned and lifted her head, scanning around her before she jolted again. Not a square inch of her vision remained static for more than a second, as pegasi both walked and flew in every spare vacancy that the stadium could provide.

The confused farm mare did a full 360-degree turn before stumbling to her haunches. She looked back to the ground, breathing heavily, and closed her eyes, begging the pounding in her ears to cease.

Parasprites were better than this. Stampedes after all-nighters were better than this. Hay, if Discord popped his face through the clouds to say hi, she’d at least appreciate the distracting company. How many times had she stared death in the eyes? And here she sat, hooves over her ears like a damn deer in the middle of a hoofball stadium. The ponies around her were probably lookin’ at her like she was a twigged out mare who snuck past security... Nopony with enough sensibility to notice an honest-to-goodness fish out of water and lend a…

A hoof tapped her shoulder. She lifted a hoof from one of her ears, but no sound reached her mind. She chanced a peek, letting the world fade back in a haze of color.

Rarity sat beside her on the floor, smiling a knowing smile. A pearly-blue bubble surrounded them, opaque enough that the world outside was just a series of passing shadows.

“You know, it’s not easy to watch over you when you run off like that,” Rarity hummed, the first sound that floated into Applejack’s ears.

Applejack looked at her hooves, and focused her vision. She let out a breath. Two. Three. A sickly shudder passed through her body as she slumped to the ground, spine released of all of the tension it had harbored. She rested her head on her hooves and just let her breaths come.

“There’s a lot of bits about me that ain’t easy, Rarity. I appreciate it even more cuz’ of em.” Applejack sat up and poked an experimental hoof at the bubble that surrounded them. “Whatever this is, don’t stop doin’ it.”

“It’s a sphere of concentration. I use it when I work, though usually it’s a lot bigger than this. I figure you get the idea, what with the name and all…” Rarity made a point of keeping her voice low, standing to her hooves, the glossy sphere moving a foot up with her.

Applejack blinked. “Is this how you’ve been right comfortable all day? Cuz' otherwise I just don’t get how you can up and compose yourself despite bein’ in season.”

Rarity giggled and raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I can’t really. But that’s the beauty of it— making ponies believe I can. Little tricks like this help when I need them to. Besides, heat is always much worse for Earth Ponies, you know. For Pegasi it comes in short and extreme waves, Unicorns usually start seeing things and can’t quite work their magic as well as usual, and for Earth Ponies it’s an unchanging swamp of anxiety and literal, physical heat flushes.”

Applejack furrowed her brow, rising to eye-level with her friend. “Where’d ya’ll learn that?”

Rarity laughed, turning and standing side-by-side with the farm pony. “Same place you should’ve: public school.”

Applejack turned her vision to the ground. “Oh. Yeah. Granny took me n’ Mac out of those lessons, if I recall properly.”

“Tsk.” Rarity shook her head. “Knowing about your own body is important! Though, I guess I can’t blame you for it. Knowing Granny Smith, she had her own cryptically-metaphorical way of explaining it to you.” She chanced a brief smile, glancing into Applejack’s eyes. “I have to bring this down for us to walk back to our seats, you know. Think you’ll be alright?”

Applejack cleared her throat, and nodded, ears finally standing back up atop her head. “Yeah. I just needed a second alone away from the hustle and the bustle and… Yeah. I’ll be fine. Thanks, Rares.”

“You’re very welcome,” Rarity said, giving a brief smile. “Now, I just wonder where Pinkie Pie ran off to… she came out here with me but it seems we’ve gotten split up.”

Applejack shrugged. “I wouldn’t be worried. Out of all of us, that pony can take care of herself like this.”

“I only hope she doesn’t get into too much trouble,” Rarity mused, her eyes rolling upwards as if she were imagining something squeamish.

Pinkie Pie spat out the cloud-metal bolt that she had pulled from the air-vent covering. Sticking out her tongue, she rubbed it up and down with her hooves, squinting and stifling her coughs as best she could. Cloud metal could definitely use a bit more frosting.

Laying her entire body against the floor of the duct, she slowly pushed the grate open with a hoof, making sure no squeaks gave away her position. She looked down to the floor of the locker room below— it was dimly lit, littered with Wonderbolts uniforms that were not in use. She couldn’t hear anything directly below. It was safe to say that the coast seemed clear…

She stuck her head out right above where the door to the locker room was. The room continued on the other direction for a good fifty lockers before careening off to the left, shaped like an ‘L’ in it’s entirety. No ponies in sight.

Shuffling her weight to her haunches, Pinkie Pie lowered herself as far as she could, then dropped, hitting the ground with a solid smack.

“What the fuck was that?” a stallion’s voice hissed from around the corner, the words resounding through the small room. Pinkie Pie froze, looking up to the grate nearly eight feet above her— she’d been unable to bring her pogo stick, cutting off any potential to escape back through it.

“N-Nothing… I know the sound of that door like the back of my hoof,” said a mare’s voice, heated and breathy. “Now come on, we’ve only got ten before we need to be out there for the finale, and I cannot fly like this.”

“Eh. If you say so.” The stallion grunted and the faint sound of a smack just barely reached Pinkie’s ears.

Pinkie crawled along the floor of the locker room until she reached the corner of the bend that separated the mystery ponies from sight. With each hoofstep, a fantastic, familiar squelch of flesh-on-flesh grew increasingly audible to Pinkie. She couldn’t stifle her grin. This was almost too perfect. She peeked her head around the corner...

Pinkie’s gasp would have given her away in an instant if her face wasn’t sandwiched to the floor.

Spitfire, captain of the Wonderbolts, was being rammed up her tailhole by a white stallion harder than Pinkie had ever seen a pony take it before. Her face was repetitively smushed against the locker she leaned against, mouth clamped over a hoof. “Oh fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck…” she mumbled with each thrust, a steady stream of liquid dripping from both ends of the pony.

Pinkie Pie grinned an evil, diabolical grin.

If she was going to strike, it had to be now; time was of the essence.

With a hop, skip and a jump, Pinkie twirled from around the corner, sashaying over to the lockers on the other side of the room and banging her hoof against them.

Their mutual scream was too good to be true. They jumped off each other in a flash of color, frenzied eyes darting around the room before they both rested on a certain devious pink mare.

Pinkie Pie fell onto her back, snorting heaps of laughter.

“Who the fuck...” Spitfire near-blabbered, slamming her hooves against the ground.

Pinkie Pie giggled, rolling over onto her back and oinking like a pig at the mare. “S-Sorry… sorry… I couldn’t help myself. It’s… It’s just…”

The two ponies jaws dropped open, turning to look at one another, blinking once, and turning back to Pinkie.

“Oh don’t worry. I’m not here to break up your little hoedown.” Pinkie Pie snorted one final time before standing up and bowing down, swiping at the air in front of her with her hoof. “Pinkamena Diane Pie at your service. Master baker, funlover, and Element of Laughter.” She winked. “If you couldn’t tell.”

“Element of…” the stallion stepped forward and cocked an eyebrow. “Element of Laughter. Like Element-of-Harmony Element of Laughter?”

Pinkie smiled, showing her rows of teeth all the way to the back. “The one and only.” She squinted as she examined the unfamiliar pegasus. He had sunflower yellow hair that ran from the center of his head to the back of his neck in a curly mohawk. “Ooh!” Pinkie purred and took a couple steps towards the pair. “I love stallions with poofy hair.”

The stallion let out a short laugh. “Okay. This mare is fucking crazy. I’m going to get security…”

“No!” Spitifire nearly screamed, her voice shrill. “Surprise, we have like five minutes before we gotta go on. You… you can’t leave me like this.”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “Oh don’t worry. I won’t be here for long. I just… heh… dropped in to ask you for a teeensy weeensy favor. And as soon as I get a yes, I’ll be out of your hooves.”

The stallion apparently named Surprise sighed and put his hoof to his face. “Celestia… another crazy fan.”

“Yup! Crazy is what I aim for. But, if you don’t mind me saying, it looks like I’ve got you by the balls! In more ways than one!” Pinkie Pie snorted, subduing another fit of giggles.

Surprise couldn’t help but snort along with her.

“Fine! Fine! What’s the favor!” Spitfire cried, throwing her hooves in the air. “Anything! Seriously, anything to get you out of my mane.”

Pinkie Pie snapped upright, marching back and forth in full business-mode. “Here’s the dealio, Wonderbolts! As you were probably unaware, the Elements of Harmony have a shared heat cycle— it’s an unfortunate side effect of being able to generate laser beams of friendship. I need stallions— good stallions, with good reputations, so that none of them think twice before going public with what I’m about to ask you for.”

“As many as you can bring. Be at the Sky High Pub no later than nine tonight! If anypony asks, it’s a meet-and-greet with VIP guests, aka moi and my girls.” She tapped her chin as she considered the specifics of the arrangement. “But most importantly!” She turned to Spitfire and narrowed her eyes. “Is that other captain guy taken?”

“S… Soarin?” Spitfire’s eyes popped, but in an instant she was on the floor laughing. “Ahaha. That stallion? Good luck. You couldn’t find a mare from Canterlot to the Crystal Empire who could hold him down for more than, like, a week, tops.”

Pinkie Pie rolled her eyes and waved her hoof in the air. “Yeah, yeah, great, just make sure he’s there. And… last but not least…” Pinkie batted her eyes and growled at Surprise. “Make sure you’re there, curlyboy. That is, if you’re not too tired out from being Cap’n’s workhorse.”

Surprise’s stallionhood throbbed, smacking into his belly with a resounding thump. His face flushed red just as Pinkie licked her lips.

Spitfire whined and bent back down on her forelegs. “Great, fine, I’ll make it happen! I swear! Now please, please leave before I die.”

“No problemo, Captain! But, uh… I never said you had to stop while I was talking. Silly ponies...” Pinkie Pie winked, turned, and skipped out of the room.

Spitfire narrowed her eyes as she felt Surprise drop his weight on top of her again. The pink mare left as quickly as she had come but Spitfire was still going to have to one up her. She grit her teeth and flicked her tail. Good thing winning races was her special talent.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Fluttershy voiced from the back of the group. ”Staying in Cloudsdale longer than we need to, I mean…”

The six walked along the path of the commercial district of Cloudsdale to the Sky High Bar, the soft glow of the magical lanterns above lighting up the storefronts in an exciting array of color. Though it was far past sunset ponies came and went as if it was rush hour, some prancing in and out of buildings like they were too comfortable with the activity and some walking slowly, swiveling their heads around them, gazing in awe at the sights. Groups of ponies congealed even on the ceilings of lofts, peering over the edges, drinks in hoof and smiles on their faces.

“Are you kidding?! This is a great idea!” Rainbow Dash flew circles around the group. “We’re going to meet the Wonderbolts. The Wonderbolts, Fluttershy!”

Twilight Sparkle rolled her eyes. “I’m sure they’re just ponies underneath all the fame, Rainbow. Really, I’m just still wondering how Pinkie managed to pull this off!”

“It was easy!” Pinkie chimed in from the back. “I just told them it was Rainbow’s birthday. They know who she is.”

Rainbow came to a screeching halt, jaw dropping open. “They… they do?”

“Rainbow, you’re ruining your mane…” Rarity huffed and pulled the pegasus down with a glimmer of her magic. “Of course they do. After the years of Academy, and the tryouts. Really, the only reason you weren’t signed a Wonderbolt after the first Academy trip was politics and networking.”

Rainbow shrugged, skipping forward, unaccustomed to the pace of her friends. “Nah. The first Academy I was brash. Ambitious. I thought I was the best. I’m totally cool with taking a couple years to sand the edges of my awesome raw natural talent if that’s what they’re looking for.”

Applejack blinked. “Wow, Dash. Half of that was awful level-headed of ya.”

A cocky grin plastered itself over Rainbow’s features. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t get used to it. But still! The Wonderbolts!”

The six rounded a corner to the gleeful squeak that followed Rainbow’s words. Twilight cocked an eyebrow at the enormous bar, easily three stories above the rooftops of the other buildings, though that wasn’t much in a Pegasi town like Cloudsdale. Buildings naturally expanded in whichever direction was suitable, considering the lack of importance of foundational integrity and the plentiful building materials. The only cost was a wind speed limit around places like Cloudsdale, which was of nominal concern to a metropolis full of weather-controlling beings.

Still, Twilight considered herself lucky for being able to visit. Hardly any Earth Ponies or Unicorns found the means to make the trip— so few that Twilight was honestly surprised there were cloud-paths connecting all the major sections of the inner-metropolis. She made a mental note to ask Rainbow when she wasn’t so preoccupied.

The party came to a stop in front of the bar. Colorful spotlights painted the whitewashed cloud-walls of the bar a myriad of different hues and granted the place an aura of excitement that permeated the entire city block. Pegasi were bunched in groups all along the wide clouds at the base of the building, all adorned with dresses and makeup just as colorful as the establishment itself. Though it was one of the oldest and most prestigious bars in town, the place exuded youth from every pore.

“Really, though…” Fluttershy said, not sharing in the various impressed looks that the Cloudsdale-naive friends had adopted. “Is this a good idea? I mean, Spike is all alone back in the hotel room…”

Twilight shrugged. “Spike is old enough to be able to take care of himself now. And while it really wouldn’t be any trouble to convince the owners that he was of-age for a dragon, it’s still not an environment I’d exactly be comfortable bringing him to.”

Fluttershy opened her mouth to continue, but Applejack stepped in between them. “So, Rainbow: Cloudsdale bars got anything that can compete with our cider?”

“Not by a long shot.” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “But nopony comes to bars for drinks that taste good.”

Rarity let out a boisterous laugh, trying to stifle her unladylike chortle with a hoof. “Ah, the scandalous truths of the nightlife. Well, no use in warming up the pavement any longer, girls.” Rarity grinned, a devious glint in her eyes. “Let’s see if what’s on the inside lives up to the image.”

“Wait,” Twilight said, holding up her hoof, standing between her friends and the expansive door beyond. “Considering the size of this place, it’s very possible we’ll be split up sometime after entering. Normally I would have more faith in you girls, but…” She paused and her horn lit up, wrapping the friends minus Fluttershy in a soft purple glow. After a moment, the glow seemed to pop, flashing outward into the night. “There. Now, don’t take this as encouragement, but that spell should ensure that we don’t have any… um… unintended repercussions tonight.”

Applejack stepped forward, furrowing her eyebrows. “Are you saying that your spell keeps us safe from gettin’ pregnant?”

Twilight flushed red, but nodded. “Usually unicorns only learn spells that assist their destiny or profession in some way, but I figured a spell like this would be… ah… situationally useful?”

Pinkie leaned forward to Twilight, a teasing grin painted across her face. “Ooooh… Twilight, you’re friskier than I thought.” Before Twilight could properly respond in any way other than becoming redder in the face, Pinkie danced by her, placing her hooves on the door. “Okay! No more waiting! Fashionably late gets a lot uglier in her thirties!”

Without another word, Pinkie threw open the door to the club.

“Isn’t there anypony in this place who knows calculus?!” shouted a voice from within, above the static uproar of the bar’s first floor. A stallion, primed to the brim with lean flight muscle, had his hooves high up over his head and stared accusingly down at a small stack of papers on the bar counter before him.

Twilight blinked. She recognized some of the ponies with him. He was a Wonderbolt. Too surprised to really think about what she was doing, she raised a hoof and called out from the door “I do!”

The stallion looked behind him to where Twilight stood, his smile wide and excited amongst the bewildered stares of his teammates. “Fantastic!” He swooped up his papers with a swish of his wing and dashed over to her side. “These are the mares we’ve been waiting for, right Surprise?”

Surprise was pitched over backwards on the counter practically laughing his flight suit off. “Oh… Oh, yeah, Fleetfoot, that’s them.”

“Fantastic!” he replied, snapping his head back to Twilight, his wide, excited eyes only inches from Twilight’s incredulous ones. “Come with me! We’ve got work to do!”

With a wave of the hoof and a flash of auburn fur Fleetfoot was out the door, practically dragging Twilight along behind him.

Rarity’s hooves flew up immediately. “Oh come on! We’re in the door for two seconds and the most bookish mare in Equestria is being whisked away by… by… him?!”

Pinkie Pie hit the ground laughing, rolling over and holding her stomach, the eyes of the bar-goers still glued to the ridiculous entrance of the Elements of Harmony.

Rainbow was still frozen in the threshold of the door, focusing on her breathing as she looked upon her idols not twenty feet away. A muscled blue body crept into the edge of her vision, but she passed it off as just another moving shadow in the busy bar.

“Hey,” Soarin said, flashing a smile. “You’re Rainbow Dash, yeah?”

Rainbow’s head turned to her side like it was on a rusty set of gears. “S-S… Uh…” She blinked and let out a laugh that was just too loud for how close he was to her. “Yeah! That’s me! The dashiest!” She gulped, her face flushing red as soon as the words left her mouth. “And… you’re Soarin!”

“Yep. That’s me. The Soariniest.” Soarin chuckled and nodded. “You’re pretty cute when you want to be, Rainbow. Wanna hit up the VIP bar on the fifth fl-”

“Yes!” Rainbow, suddenly aware that she had been forgetting to blink and breathe, sucked in a deep breath of air and batted her eyelashes. “I mean… uh… yeah. That sounds pretty cool…”

Soarin smiled and poked her side with the tip of his wing. “Great! I’ll race you there!” He winked and stepped away from her, flaring his wings out wide. “If you think you’re up to it, I mean.”

Rainbow broke her speed-nodding record and hunched over, extending her wings, poised to break her speed-flying one next. The two took off out windows on either side of the place with a boom that rattled every chair and table.

“I think I need a drink…” Rarity said with a groan that befit anything but the hours she had spent preparing herself.

Applejack ruffled her bangs with an upwards breath. “I’m right with you there, sister…” She followed Rarity in suit, the two of them taking seats on the elongated counter.

Fluttershy’s eyes darted around the walls of the bar from behind a swoop of her mane. The pegasus gulped as she looked over to the group of Wonderbolts. Some looked back at her, questioning looks on their face. She shuffled back against a wall of the bar, cycling her gaze between various inanimate objects in the room to avoid their speculation.

Suddenly, she felt a tap on her shoulder. Her heart leapt in her chest. She snapped her head to the left, eyes wide, but blinked as she found no one standing before her. Another tap came, this time on her right shoulder. Again she looked, and saw only the blur of a pink hoof as it pulled quickly away.

“Pinkie…” Fluttershy sighed and looked around herself, finding the party pony perched impossibly on a neon sign that adorned the wall behind where she stood.

Pinkie Pie batted her eyelashes and leaned backwards, perching her head upside-down against Fluttershy’s. “Yes, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy scrunched her nose. “Pinkie, you know what places like this do to me.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Sorry…” Pinkie said, hopping down from the fixture and shrugging. “I just wouldn’t feel right leaving you all alone standing up next to this wall!”

“Oh, I don’t mind. I kind of like watching ponies in a place like this, actually… So long as they’re not watching back, that is.” Fluttershy gave a soft smile and lifted up a hoof, shooing Pinkie away. “I’ll probably leave in a little while anyways— I figure Spike could use some company. Anyways, I couldn’t stand between you and your fun.”

Pinkie Pie nuzzled her cheek into Fluttershy’s for a moment. “Aw, thanks Flutters. Enjoy your pony watching!”

Fluttershy watched as the party pony skipped away, drawing the eyes of every patron in the bar as she went. She was glad, in a way, that the eyes were following Pinkie— it meant that her friend was happy, and that they weren’t watching her.

An uneasy frown drooped over her features. She recognized the feeling— it was one that she hadn’t known in the years since she’d met the girls, aside from a couple rough days.

Even then, she could curl up on the couch with a blanket and just lie her head down and let it all seep away. For some it seemed that the couches were the bar stools and the blankets were the wings of other ponies, but Fluttershy found little comfort in the lifestyle.

With a final soft smile to the patrons who happened to glance her way, she turned and left the bar.

Pinkie plopped her hooves over the eyes of Surprise from behind, sidling her body in next to his. “Guess who?”

Surprise let out a heavy sigh, slouching forward. “You have no idea what it took to get all these guys here. You could at least give me a ‘thank you’ before you start fucking with me.”

“Ohh, there will be plenty of that, I’m sure,” Pinkie said, leaning forward and rubbing her cheek against his own. “But thanks, ‘Prizie!”

“It’s Surprise.” Surprise removed Pinkie’s hooves with his own, turning to her and giving her a blank stare. “And who thinks I’d be stupid enough to break rule number 1?”

“Rule number 1?”

“Don’t stick your dick in crazy.”

“Oh, trust me.” Pinkie grinned, bouncing her eyebrows twice. “I’m not even close to crazy yet.”

“Oh, I believe it. But I don’t intend to stick around long enough to find out.” He pulled away from her and stood up from the barstool he had been sitting at. He glanced over Pinkie a final time as he turned, eyes falling from head to barrel to cutie mark… and freezing instantly. “W...Wait…” Surprise stumbled back, looking over Pinkie as his eyes widened. “H-How did you get that cutie mark?!”

“What cutie mark?” Pinkie said, cocking her eyebrow and turning her gaze to Surprise’s flank. “That cutie mark?”

“No! This is my cutie mark!”

“Exactly! My cutie mark!”

“Your cutie mark… is my cutie mark?!” Surprise practically blathered as he stepped around the mare, inspecting her other flank to find the same three balloons. “Why do you have my cutie mark?”

Pinkie let out a huge gasp as if she hadn’t already noticed, and leaned into Surprise’s side, a wide smile across her face. “You’re a party pony just like me!”

“A party pony? Like, balloons for parties? No, my balloons are for flying!”

“Great! Cause I just happen to be in need of a flier, and your teammates just happen to be in need of a party pony!” Pinkie said, running a hoof through Surprise’s wing. “You’re strong enough to carry a pony on your back, right?”

Surprise pulled away from her and snapped his wing to his body. “Carry a pony on my… what?! What are you even talking about?”

Pinkie Pie smiled and gave him a nod. “So, your friends just flew off with my friends, correct? Correct. And your friends don’t know my friends. But they’re trying to know my friends so well that my friends trust them to take care of them for the night. I know my friends. You know your friends. We follow our friends, and we make sure that everything goes just right so that they can get friendly!”

“What? How does that even… why would you think I even…” Surprise bumbled, narrowing his eyes and raising a shaky hoof.

Pinkie sighed and rolled her eyes. “Look. Why is your name Surprise if you won’t even let the universe surprise you every once in awhile? There’s gotta be a reason we both have the same cutie mark, and we’ll never find out that reason if we both just say ‘buh-bye’ and bounce away! And everypony knows that the best way to find out secrets of the universe is to go on adventures!”

Surprise gave Pinkie a long, deadpan stare, ears twitching as he mulled over the words. “You know, that doesn’t make any fucking sense. But in a way, it makes more than anything else you’ve said…” He exhaled and let his ears droop. “Besides, the guys have been saying for a while that Fleetfoot seriously needs to get laid.”

Pinkie flashed a knowing smile. “Oh, trust me. So does Twilight. She’s just gotta put herself in a position to choose to, and she’ll never do that cooped up in safe old Ponyville.”

“They do seem perfect for eachother.”

“So…?” Pinkie singsonged the words, leaning forward and letting her smile grow as she waited for a response.

Surprise shrugged and finally let his bleak muzzle break into a smile. “Fine. Let’s make it happen.”

Pinkie jumped forward and planted a huge wet smooch on his cheek, wrapping him in her hooves. “Oh, thankyou, thankyou, thankyou—”

He quickly pushed her away and turned his head away from her, but Pinkie could see the redness lingering in his face. With a sigh, he mumbled “I can’t believe I just agreed to that…”

Author's Note

When I wrote this story I had not read far enough in the comics to realize that Fleetfoot is an actual canon Wonderbolt. I could have changed it before publishing but decided not to, so sorry for the confusion.

Rainbow Gusto Dash

“No,” Rainbow said, pulling her hooves away.

“What’s wrong?” Soarin asked, a fake, pained smile on his face.

“You know what’s wrong.”

“So you don’t…”

“You know I do.” Rainbow puffed her bangs out of her face.

“So what’s the problem, Rainbow?” His suave smile was more pained, pleading. “Why lie to yourself?”

Rainbow felt her body tense, and pushed her hooves an inch into the clouds below. She took a deep breath.

“No.”

“That’s not an answer.”

She twitched.

“I said no. I don’t care what my body says, cuz I say no. It was interesting to get to know you, Soarin.” Rainbow turned and walked towards the door on the far side of the room.

“Babe, wait,” Soarin said, hot on her heels. “You’re walking out on me? ...me?”

“Gladly.” She descended the stairs to the nearest balcony and exited into the brisk night air. Nopony else was there; it was just a landing for ponies to come in and out of.

“Ah, come on, what did I do wrong?”

She turned and stared him dead in the eyes. “Just forget me. You were…” she crinkled her nose, “charming.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She sighed, and looked out over the alive nighttime metropolis. “Your whole life, you’ve looked up to someone. Wondering about what it’s like to be them. Wondered what they’d think of you. Wondered what they’d ask about. Wondered if they liked that same band you did. You work your whole life to find out. It’s your dream.”

“Is that it? Because I don’t like Iron Mareden?”

Rainbow’s eye twitched. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath.

And then she started screaming.

“No, you fucking idiot, it’s because from the moment we sat down at the bar you’ve been thinking ‘Oh, it’s Dashie, what an impressionable little mare in heat, she’ll sure be easy to bag n’ tag like a notch on my Wonderbolt suit.’ It doesn’t matter how many years I’ve been using imaginary-you to get through heat because real-you doesn’t have a drop of respect for me. You don’t give a fuck about me and I’m so sick of it so just please walk back inside and find some other nameless, needy mare who’ll get under the table and suck your Wonderbolt dick.”

A rainbow streak blew wind into Soarin’s face before his jaw could even open